One of my children used to own a little digital device. Afflicted with the double-liability of being not only a child but a boy child, he often handled this device with reckless abandon. We developed our own litany around this device. He would tuck it between his chin and chest to carry it because his hands were full, and I would remind him how much the device had cost. He would leave it lying on the floor, and I would remind him that its screen had not been designed to resist the heels of his older brothers. After every exchange he would make a surprised noise, as if this were the first time he was hearing about the eggshell quality of digital screens. It was like living with an Alzheimer’s patient who is continually surprised to learn that he is in possession of a kitten.
And so the inevitable happened, as inevitable things tend to do. I didn’t hear about it from the boy. Instead my wife came to me and relayed the bad (but gratifying) news. He had indeed been carrying it carelessly, and it had indeed dropped, and lo and behold, the screen had cracked, just as his sage father had foretold. I was hearing it from her, she explained, because he was afraid to tell me.
I was only just getting into a practice run of my sermon when she held up her hand. “I told him he has to be a man and own up to it,” she said. “Your job is to not be a jerk when he does.”
Well then.
I allowed that she had a point. I can get overzealous when it comes to helping my children see all the ways that greater attention to my strictures and advice can spare them (and more importantly, me) many of life’s hardships. And besides, the little tyke was already suffering, what with his Angry Birds now indistinguishable from their arch enemies the Bad Piggies. I resolved to hold my tongue.
A few days later the boy screwed his courage to the sticking post and came to me, eyes downcast, to confess his error. Even with my wife’s forewarning still stinging my pride, I felt a sermon welling up within. But I restrained it, and instead thanked him for coming to tell me.
I couldn’t resist pointing out, however, that I’d warned him. He nodded. This was the part he’d been expecting. Ah well. I never said I was perfect.
And as if God himself wanted to illustrate this point, the very next day I was standing beside this particular child when I took out my far more expensive device using just two fingers, because my hands were otherwise engaged. It tumbled from my fingertips and struck the concrete in a manner that is gravely warned against in the owner’s manual. The resulting crackreverberated between us, the boy and me.
And this son of mine, bless him, didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Which is how I learned from an 8 year-old that most of our criticisms are unnecessary.
It’s not the first lesson I’ve learned from my children, nor the last. Sometimes I think maybe I’ve had this fathering thing all backwards. That the purpose isn’t so much for them to learn from me, as for me to learn from them. Or maybe that’s just how it goes for we less than perfect men.
