This is how Bridget looked coming home from church on Sunday, minus the scarf around her neck.
We took a spontaneous trip to the Church History Museum yesterday. They have some really fun stuff for kids now (it's been a while since I've been there). Bridget could make a stained glass window (plexi-glass), build a temple with blocks, be in the nativity scene, see the tree President Hinckley used for the podium in the Conference Center, look at pictures from the scriptures, pretend to come home from the hospital with a new baby and walk straight into the mother's lounge at the church. Wait. What?
There is a huge mural on one of the walls depicting a man helping a very pregnant woman walk into a hospital. If they were to keep going in the same direction, they would hit a podium (like at a bank) with handy birth certificates to fill out for the baby they just had. After you fill out the birth certificate, it's straight to a corner where there are a couple of changing tables, a pretend sink, two rocking chairs... The mother's lounge at church. Really? Is that representing us so well? I would think we should be keeping the part about mothers being stuck in a stinky little room listening to church talks being piped in over a speaker system while changing poopy pants at church a secret. Mum. Is. The. Word.We pretty much took the rest of the museum at a run because there weren't toys in any of the other rooms. I would have liked to study more of the displays.
Brian probably would have liked to have finished that talk he started...
Ah, well. The topic of the cushiness of Bridget's life has been on my mind lately. As my friend and fellow music teacher said the other day, there's nothing hard about our lives. A day like yesterday would have been a birthday for Brian, and I don't think it would ever have happened in my childhood. (Me with both of my parents alone?! Never.) How do you teach your kids to work and endure when everything comes so easily?
I really do want to know.
6 comments:
When you discover the answer to the question you posed, please let me know, because I've been pondering the same thing.
Sometimes I feel like my kids should enjoy the good times so they have many good memories to draw on when the bad times come, which they most certainly will.
We just visited that place not to long ago, my kids could have stayed all day. My boys LOVED the mother's lounge! :-)
As I look back on raising you kids, I wish I had had you more involved in service outside the home. Some friends in Cary had their kids do some service every day and they turned into very compassionate people who are always concerned for the welfare of others. Just a thought.
Looks like a fun trip. Love the picture of Bridgie with the umbrella.
I like both of those ideas.
That picture of Bridget with the umbrella is so cute!
I don't have an answer to your question, but I think there's alot to be said for good discipline. If young children know that they have to listen to their parents, then they will still listen when they're older. I used to think that my brother and his wife were hard on their little girls, but now I see those teenage girls following the rules, all of the time, whether they are supervised or not, and I see that their parents were right. Clear expectations make a difference.
I'd like to point out that you took her to a church history museum, not Chuck E. Cheese. One of the main themes of the museum is work hard and endure. There will come a time when she won't want to spend the day with her parents at a museum. Enjoy it while you can.
I went to college with a lot of spoiled girls and the main difference between them and girls I liked was they were given everything they ever asked for and weren't familiar with work.
send them to a less fortunate country for a day. not that i have done that or my parents did it to me, but i would think it would be a major wake-up call. perhaps not as realistic as doing service every day, but a lasting impression, no?
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