Watch Out...She's Gonna Blow

 classroom 'investigations' - making car tracks with blocks

Something families do really well is knock off all the raw and rough edges and refine us.  A little bit here and a little bit there.  Over time our families make us reconsider how we respond to circumstances and help us to understand that we may not know what is going on in someone else's life to make them respond the way they do.  They tell us the truth (sometimes the painful truth!) about how our actions impact on other people. 

The other day the kids and I (my kids, not my students) were discussing something (I can't remember what) and I began to get a little hot under the collar passionate in the way I reacted to the topic.  It wasn't a discipline issue or a parent-child disagreement - just a discussion where we were all expressing our opinions and sharing our thoughts.  My kids know all too well that there are some topics that press my buttons.  This was, apparently, one of them!  Miss Sunshine, in all her 16yo wisdom, commented just as I was getting a bit worked up, "watch out, here comes the cyclone".

How's that to stop you in your tracks.  And I did.  And they laughed.

For those of you who don't know it, there was a famous cyclone in 1974 that hit Darwin on Christmas Day, named Tracy.  Yep - same spelling and all.  I was 3 at the time.

After our staff devotions on Monday, in which we heard about Child Theology, I think it's rather apt to acknowledge that my kids have plenty to teach me.  Perhaps as much as I have to teach them.  I think it's a wise parent who is humble enough to accept that our children have a certain way of cutting straight through the superfluous junk to get to the heart of a matter to refine us.

In what ways do your kids teach you?