Some things give me goose pimples.

Sometimes you read things or hear a story and it just hits ya. Things like this blog post about interest-lead learning did that to me today.

Yesterday, it was a little book I got at a yard sale, a vintage children’s book with sweet little drawings about a big brother professing all of the things he will do for his little sister when he grows up. Here are some scanned pages… They just took my breath away. I love when things do that.

Excerpts and illustrations from “a rose, a bridge, and a wild black horse” by Charlotte Zolotow:

Another thing I feel emotional about: My son lied to me this morning. He was afraid of getting in trouble and told me that he didn’t cause the crying of Caleb, though Caleb was clear that Ethan was the perpetrator. I took him outside because he was not able to keep his voice down, so I suggested we just go take a walk. At first, he hid his face from me while we sat on the brick ledge of our yard. When he was calmly talking about other things, like the seeds from the weeds next to us, I brought up the incident again. I talked to him about telling me the truth no matter what, that I wouldn’t be mad AT him but that I was disappointed in the way he handled it and I felt sad that he felt he couldn’t tell me the truth. Finally, he confessed that he had thrown a lego at Caleb. He was adamant that he didn’t want to say sorry, however. Instead of insisting, I talked with him about it. I figured, if he is now old enough to be feeling guilty and start lying, he is old enough for me to give him the respect of talking this through. I told him how sometimes you can hurt friendships when you don’t know how to say sorry. I have had friendships that could have gotten through some tough times, if only both parties would have been willing to take their share of the blame and apologize. I watched him conclude, on his own, that Caleb’s friendship was important to him and he wanted to say sorry and play nicely so they could go back to playing again. Real life reconciliation- we all have a lot to learn, don’t we? Humility, confession… conversing not for the sake of being right, but to actually creatively problem solve some solutions to our conflict?

As I get front row seats to his development, my kid makes life infinitely more meaningful to me.