Wednesday, Feb. 03, 2010

Little ears listening

It was 4 a.m. The house was silent. And then the dog sat up.

He started barking, prompting Really Big Guy to go exploring. He found one kid in bed but the other was missing. At least temporarily.

Little Guy was hiding under the kitchen table fully dressed for school. He'd been trying to reach a cereal bowl on a high shelf. And the racket woke the dog who barked and then woke us, simultaneously startling him.

Which raised a bigger question. Why did my child feel the need to be dressed and ready for breakfast three hours earlier than his usual time?

It was my fault, of course.

The day before, I had one of those moments. You know the kind. When you secretly thank goodness there are no hidden cameras in the house or tape recorders in the car. Yes, I admit some of my best yelling moments have taken place at red lights.

In this particular incident, I may have overstated, multiple times, my frustration in getting out the door in the morning. We'd been leaving for school later and later, slowly adding minutes to our departure. And as all mothers know, minutes in the morning are calculated. There's not a second to spare.

Part of my rant may have included a few choice sentences about the boys taking more responsibility. That if I woke them earlier and had them do a few of the things that I usually do, perhaps they'd appreciate how precious our minutes were.

Apparently, Little Guy took this warning to heart and decided he'd better get with the program. But instead of feeling proud that my message had been heard, I felt horrible for making my kid think so much about it that he actually woke up in the dead of night to get organized.

And herein is another lesson of parenting. We've become accustomed to the few and far between glimpses we're given that confirm our kids actually listen. But it's not often we're reminded that they sometimes take what we say literally.