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July '04 Parent/Child bonding The following is a true and accurate account of a recent scene at our house. I still love them anyway…. You know how you try to teach your children to respect other people’s property and belongings? You spend their formative years reciting the same mantra over and over, take care of it, put it away, don’t break it, etc. You can only hope that it becomes second nature to them. Then a friend comes over and breaks something that doesn’t belong to the child who let them play with it. This results in a mini-war, with lots of yelling, finger-pointing, blaming, and occasionally pushing. The kids get upset too. So then a parent or guardian takes it upon himself to fix the broken item, thereby appearing in his child’s eyes as nothing short of a miracle worker who can do no wrong. In the process of repairing the damaged goods the parent decides that he needs to have a work table. Hey, the $40 self-healing cutting mat on mom’s table in the sewing room would be the perfect place for that, those mats are pretty much indestructible anyway, aren’t they? Sure. So parent and child bond together while creating wonderful memories smearing wood glue on mom’s quilting mat, ruler, and any other tools that just happen to be on the table. And don’t worry about sticky fingers, they can just wipe them off on the fabric there, mom’s got lots. All the while the parent reinforces the lesson learned about using other persons belongings and the responsibility we have for them. It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?
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