Wednesday, January 4, 2012

patience

my little man has become just a little obsessed with LEGOs. and he is also a rule-follower. he now has almost every piece of a certain space-themed set of LEGOs. but he's missing one piece. a box of LEGOs that costs about $70. he saw it at Barnes and Noble the other night and was near tears as he discovered he was not, actually, going to walk out of the store with it. maybe we go the library too much. he seems to think a lot of stuff is free.

so jason and i took him home and started talking about what Christmas money he'd been given and how much of that we'd let him spend on that item, if he wanted. but the rest of the money, he'd have to work for.

this did not appeal to him. jason said, "but, buddy, this will be a great way for you to learn to have patience."

response: "i don't want patience. i want the LEGOs."

yup. i feel ya, son.

see... i want a camera. a new camera. a fancy-pants camera. a pretty pretty camera.

and i'm not very patient about it at all. pretty grouchy and selfish, most of the time.

so.

my son started working around the house to earn money for his LEGOs.

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and i made a little bank for myself. yes, i did.

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so what if, right now, it contains about 3% of the total cost of said fancy-pants camera? my son and i can learn some patience together.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I absolutely LOVE your camera coin bank! It's easier to see the want-it-now attitude in our kids and miss that log of greed sticking out of our own eye. Way to go modeling the right heart to your kids!

BTW, can I just say how much I love reading your blog? :-) So much of what you write is what I'm thinking about or struggling with, but you are able to articulate it so well be so wonderfully honest with yourself and others. THANK YOU for taking the time to jot your thoughts and snapshots of life! It spurs me on and helps me be a better mommy and disciple!

Anonymous said...

that's so stinkin cool! I love it!
Bri

erica said...

i'm so proud of you. what a cute piggy-bank girl you are. i want one now...labeled record player.