This Lamp - Blog Posts

This entry was originally posted on August 25, 2009, on the original This Lamp website. It has been relocated here.

I saw a good mother today.

Often I remind people that since I don’t have children of my own yet, I consider myself an expert on parenting. Granted that’s a joke. But there is some truth to it nonetheless. Why? Because I watch very carefully how other people parent their children. I don’t overtly set out to do this, but it just happens. And I think it happens for two reasons. First, I really do want to be a good parent myself one day, and I often learn from example (or bad examples). Second, since Kathy and I have not been able to have our own children (we’re now in the adoption process), I pay close attention to how parents relate to their children. Do they appreciate them, or do they take them for granted?

You’re in a social setting with us. Your children are there, too. Am I watching you? Yes. I’m sorry. I’m also drawing conclusions. I try not to be judgmental, but I am sometimes. Do you have any idea how lucky you really are?

Do you?

So, this afternoon, I was having an early dinner at a fast food restaurant before the class I would teach tonight. There weren’t too many people there at that time of day. It was not my goal to watch others’ interactions. Like always, it just kind of happened. I had brought my Mac in with me, but I never opened it. The mother and her little boy two tables in front of me were much more interesting.

Since they were in my line of sight, I ran less of a chance of getting caught staring. A couple of times, the mother’s eyes met mine. Both times, she smiled pleasantly. I smiled back, and she resumed her attention to her son. For that moment of the afternoon, he was her world completely, and she was his. She was not preoccupied with a phone or text conversation, a magazine, or any other person or thing. Just him, only him.

The mother talked sweetly to her son the entire time, and yet she never talked down to him. When she walked across the room to get a straw, she said to him, "Watch mama's purse." Of course, in his high chair he could do no such thing. But he looked at her and smiled nonetheless.

She did not feed him fast food, but had a little box of the circus animal crackers. She used a basic snack as an opportunity for learning. She pulled each of the animals out and placed them on a napkin before the little boy, naming them as she went. And it wasn't just a bear; it was a koala bear. The little boy tried to repeat each animal after her, smiling with delight at saying the names.

When he reached for her soda, she said, "Oh, no, you can't have that. It's pure sugar. Here, drink your water. "

This young woman wasn't just the boy's mother; she was his first teacher. I thought of my first teachers. I don't remember it, but I'm told that in a week I spent with my grandmother at the same age as this little boy, she purposefully sang the alphabet the entire week--while she was cooking, cleaning, and playing with me. She said she did that so that by the time my mother picked me up, I was singing it, too.

I do, however, remember sitting in my mother's lap as a child while she read to me--Bible stories and Little Golden Books. She didn't just read to me; she interacted with me, much like the mother I watched today with her little boy. My mother used to point to the pictures and ask me questions. She eventually started pointing out the letters in the words. By the time I entered elementary school, I already knew how to read--often to the exasperation of my first teachers, one of whom complained to my mother "You left me nothing to teach him!"

There's always more to teach--if one is a capable teacher.

I have no idea if this mother devotes her attention to her little boy so exclusively, all the time. She probably doesn't. However, I thouht to myself as I watched them talk and look into each others' eyes, that if this was even the average kind of time they spent together, then that little boy would have every opportunity in the world to do well.