As I may have mentioned before, my 5-year-old son Aaron is full of surprises. He certainly has some of my stubbornness and sarcastic sense of humor. He told a friend that gets him on the bus that he was not getting on the bus, when she started to get stern with him about going he replies, “I’m just kidding!” He will tell his sister he, “hates her” but then takes her laundry basket to the laundry room for her.
He is also very realistic. He is not good at the grey area, or the abstract. If you tell him to “shake a leg” you better not be expecting him to hurry but rather to actually be shaking his leg. Needless to say you have to be careful with what you say sometimes because you never know how the boy will interpret that, and as all kids do, he remembers EVERYTHING!
Now you all may be wondering why I have shared these bits of information with you, well just wait it’s coming. Yesterday as we were all getting ready for church, Aaron comes in, hair a little wet above his forehead and he says, “mom, I’m sick I can’t go to church, I have a fever”. He knows that being sick is the only real reason to miss church. I touched his forehead and in fact it was very hot (however from the evidence of the wet forehead I knew he had taken a washcloth with hot water to make it that way). I told him to get the thermometer.I took his temp and then told him, “it’s only 97.1 so I think you can go to church.” He stomped off very defeated. He thought he had outsmarted me and was going to get to stay home. He is only 5! My 8-year-old has not even thought of something like that. All I could think was, what was I going to do when he is older and has honed his “Ferris Bueller” skills?