A lesson in everything, in everything a lesson!

My daughter is smart. She is three but sometimes she sounds like she is an adult. She can name bones in her body, tell you where her internal organs are and knows how to take a blood pressure. She can tell you what a trapezoid, octagon, and pentagon look like. She can sign more words than I can, and she recently started informing people that we don't bite others because we aren't cannibals.  I won't deny that she still acts like a kid, and she had a tendency to become whiny when she is tired, but she is smarter than I could have ever hoped for. People ask me all the time what I do. "Does she go to a school?" "Is it because you don't work and get to stay home with her?" "How much time do you spend on learning?"

She isn't in school.. And I feel like she would be just as smart if I was working... And how much time do I spend teaching her, that's easy... Every waking minute. Every choice, every meal, every single thing we do is a time for her to learn something. It is all about how you choose to use those moments. 

Driving down the road we pick signs to read, tell the shape and color, and discuss what it means. Shopping at the store I tell her what is in the food I just chose, ask her what letters are on the box and what food group it is in. I use letter/number/shape cookie cutters to make each meal a lesson in something. 

I've never let her get away with saying words incorrectly just because she is little  and I've never let the fact that she was born fifteen weeks early hold her back any. 

But those aren't the important things. The real lessons in life come at the moments when we don't feel like we are doing anything for them. The times when they are watching us that we don't even know it. What do you do when you see someone in need? What are they learning from you on how to react to bad customer service? How important do you make God in your life? If you don't say yes mam and please, how can you expect them to? 

I feel like, as parents, we are our child's main teachers in life. Yes, they will attend school and go through numerous amounts of people who will be in charge of them learning the quadratic equation and the periodic table. Sure, they will be tested and retested on nouns and pronouns. But you alone have more influence than any one person should be help responsible for. 

You are their PARENT. You aren't their friend. What you teach them needs to reflect that. If the small attitude of a toddler is allowed because you don't want to upset them or make them cry, then the eleven year old will remember back and think her attitude is allowed.  If you scream and yell at people out of anger, then when they get angry, your child will scream and yell also. Do you choose to put God first in your life? If you don't, then you cannot expect that, given the choice, they will either. The important things. When you see a homeless person, do you help? Or volunteer somewhere? Or donate to a cause? 

So maybe my child can name twenty bones and she can write her ABCs. The moments that really make me beam are the ones when she stops to tell the elderly woman hello. Or when she wants to hug someone because they look sad. When she tells me that we can't eat yet because we haven't said our prayers. Those are the things that really matter. Your IQ has nothing on your attitude. What lessons will you teach your children today??