Know-Love-Obey God

(High Calling Blogs Book Club:
Loving Monday, by John Beckett, Chapters 12-14
See Laura Boggess’s post (and links to other Book Club posts) here.)

Today in our “school room” sit two big desks handed down by a neighbor, now an empty-nester. I still can’t believe he gave us those. They are of beautiful, sturdy oak, fashioned by his own hands. Also crowding this room are a piano, a table, two bookcases, a shoe rack, and a hobby horse that I can’t wait to bring to the Goodwill drop-off.

I remember the first year in this (our first) home, a house that had already been standing eleven years. The small family room (now the school room) was beautifully empty of furnitire except the piano and a giant bean bag. Vacuuming was a cinch, even a joy!

Life was simpler and more routine then. I vacuumed every Monday and cleaned all the bathrooms every Wednesday. We had one child who ate a banana every morning at 10:00, sitting in his toddler-sized “director’s chair” I bought at Children’s Orchard, a second-hand store. Every day he would sit in my lap while I read board books. Sometime between the banana and lunch, we would sit on the living room carpet to learn ABC’s.

For this we used refrigerator magnets (all uppercase) which I kept in an old one-quart yogurt container. Derek sat on the floor while I laid down each letter, one by one, in order, five letters per row, ending with the Z by itself in its own row. As I set each letter down, I would speak the letter name while he watched and listened intently. He was listening, storing the information. You could tell just by looking at him.

While I was pregnant and waiting for Titus’s birth, Charles and I wondered what this one would be like. He commented that one test of good parents is whether or not they could be good parents to children with different personalities—especially different than themselves.

Titus was born. We read board books to him, too—and that’s when I made the rule that if you ask me to read a book to you, you must sit through the entire book.

When he was old enough for the ABC refrigerator-magnet ritual, Titus and I sat down on the living room carpet. I dumped the letters out of the yogurt container and began the old routine: “A” . . . “B” . . .

He reached out to grab the A. I replaced the A and the child, sitting them both down to their places, then started again: “A” . . . “B” . . . “C” . . .

I pressed my lips together and sighed, realizing this was not going to work. Titus is not Derek. That was obvious way back, on the day we took him home from the hospital. This one screamed when Charles changed his diaper. The newborn Derek never screamed (not counting those colic-screams from 9:20-9:40 p.m. every night).

With Titus, I kept up the ABC’s on the floor, but he learned them out of alphabetical order. The letters were never in five rows of five, plus the Z in its own row, but—guess what happened? He learned the alphabet just as well.

My husband’s earlier comment (which I accepted as a challenge!) was one of the best things that happened in my parenthood. As with snowflakes and fingerprints, each child is different from the other. Even seemingly similar situations may need a different approach, so I should be flexible and sensitive. I don’t have be so rigid as to do everything the same way every time; I should seek and value the different strengths and personalities of my children.

By the way, as for our next child—well, that boy never even saw the fridge magnets. But he ended up figuring out his ABC’s, too.

**********
(In this week’s Book Club chapters, John Beckett writes about the infinite worth and unique blueprint of each individual. Follow the link above to join the discussion.)