Surprise lesson for mom

My son and daughter were having a hard time getting along. There are times they play together great. Like they're the best of friends. Most moments though, my boys play together and my daughter, who is in between the boys in age, feels left out. My husband and I found out my oldest son says his little sister is to loud and that's why he doesn't like to play with her. We could certainly understand that. She is loud. So we just let it go. That was a mistake.

During the next few days my son would tell his sister, “I don't want to play with you. You're to loud! Leave me alone.” I could see this was not going well. I didn't want my daughter to have this label of being “loud” branded on her. As I thought about it and watched her the next few days I could see she isn't trying to be “loud”. She's a very expressive person. She really gets into her stories and comments. You have no doubt how she feels because she shows it in her voice and body language. It's actually one of the things I like about her. She's good at conveying her thoughts and feelings. I believe she'll learn how to handle things with more tact as she gets older. (She's only in kindergarten.) In the meantime I want my son to learn to love her and be kind to her. I prayed that the Lord would show me how to turn this into a good character building lesson for all of them.

On Monday we all gathered at the table after breakfast to start our homeschooling day with a devotional as we do most school mornings. (On Mondays I always read the Spelling story for devotions. The curriculum I use has a story at the beginning of the week that teach them biblical character along with the spelling words.) The devotional that morning was perfect. The kids in the story had to write something they liked about everyone in their classroom. Then everyone got a piece of paper with all the qualities their classmates like about them. I've done this project when I was a teenager and it had quite an impact on me. It was the perfect solution. I had my children say two things they liked about everyone in the family. This caused my son to think of the things he liked about his sister. It also showed my daughter that there are so many great things about her. This solved both my problems at the same time. It also had a surprising lesson in it for me. Since most of my children are to young to spell and write well, I took them in a room separately and wrote what they liked about everyone. Through this I learned what is important to each of my children. What makes them tick and speaks love to them. Bottom line was, playing with them and spending time together is what speaks love to them most. I thought to myself how many times my children come to me and want me to play with them and most of the time I can't because I'm cooking or housecleaning or trying to do something else. I really need to try to say yes to playing with them more often. I know there are times I truly can't but I was better at saying yes to them a few months ago. I just need to be intentional about it again.

“You should be like one big happy family, full of sympathy toward each other, loving one another with tender hearts and humble minds.” I Peter 3:8