Driving home from his buddy, my 8 year old was bitching and moaning: “Why does HE get to have his own iPad AND a Wii AND his own computer AND…”
It was a long list.
True to form, after a while, I snapped. I was never spoiled with lots of stuff myself as a kid and I don’t like how much stuff my kids have as it is. Channeling Al Pacino in one of his award-winning yelling-speaches, I summarized my boys’ good fortunes and told tales of Indian children, living in slum cities, where the oldest siblings take care of the younger by fighting rats and seagulls for the tasty bits of garbage and the African children with their AIDS-ridden parents, and us living in the richest part of the world and the 1 %, and, and, and…
It wasn’t too pretty and I don’t really think what I did falls under any pedagogical recommendations or guidelines… The car was pretty quiet afterwards.
I took a long breath and quietly concluded: “When we get home, I want you to make a list of 10 things that you have, that you are lucky to have and that not all children in the world have.”
We got home and our day continued. I kind of forgot about the whole thing until I was about to turn off the lights in the kitchen to go to bed. On the counter, I found this note:
In English it says:
- Wii U
- Skylanders
- Globe
- Little brother
- IPad
- Lego City
- LegoCity Undercover
- Lego
- Playing cards
- Mom and dad
It is some sort of consolation, that dispite him being a product of his time, we as parents made the top 10.
Time to rekindle our relationship with the gratitude journal.
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What a beautiful list – almost made me cry. (Yes I’m a mother too:-))
Aww, that’s sweet. Thanks for the comment, I am so happy you took the time to tell me that.
Too cute!