Reading Between the Lines

Yesterday I had some letters that I needed to mail out. The mail person comes to my subdivision quite early (usually before 11am) and so I drove to the subdivision across the street to use the big blue mailbox that has a late pickup of 4:30. As I was getting ready to return home, my daughter asked if we could go somewhere, anywhere, because she was bored.

So of course I had to give the old lecture about being bored. "Bored is a state of mind. If you are bored it's because you are not using your mind!" and so forth and so on I went. Something inside of me goes haywire when I hear that word. At any rate, I realized what she was really saying is that she needed to get out of the house and the front and back yards just weren't doing it for her right now. OK, that's fair, so off we went to Tuesday Morning.

For those of you who are not familiar with Tuesday Morning, it's a fabulous little store that has lovely things for the home. My insides are crying for me to do some decorating around the house so I have become a frequent shopper there.

My kids always make a mad dash for the toy isle, to see what's new. My daughter tends to stay in the one spot where the books are because she is a book lover. ( I must find a better term to describe her fascination of books and another post will be necessary to tell of how if often gets her into trouble :) ) LOL

At any rate, while the kids were in the book section, a nice little older woman comes up to Christopher to "test" his reading skills. He fumbles through the book, getting a few words here and a few words there. She is not happy about this and turns to me and says "You need to read to him more!" I kindly responded, "I read to him everyday" to which my son responds "No you don't!" "Oh really?", I say. "What do we do every morning at worship time" to which he responds "Uh, read."

At first I was a bit perturbed by his response, but then as I thought about it, I realized that I used to read to him at night before he went to bed. I guess that was his way of telling me that he misses that time together.

The point of my random streams of consciousness here? Listen to your children and hear what they are really saying. They are still working on communication skills and are not always able to say exactly what they are feeling, but if we listen with our heart, we will hear them loud and clear.