Lessons I Learned from my Five Year Old.

If you are a regular reader of my blogs you likely caught my blog last week about some of the life lessons my three year old Georgia has taught me (although I'm sure there are many more to come). If you haven't caught up on my last blog, I encourage you to take a few minutes to read the previous blog before you continue reading part two of this series. I'm assuming if you're still reading, you're up to speed on this blog series. Brace yourself because I’m about to drop some more eye opening life lessons I've learned from my children. My daughter Lennox was born with the nickname Lennox the Lemon. I'm not entirely sure how she landed this nickname, perhaps this name was given to her because she was regularly pretty sour or perhaps it just flowed off the tongue easily. One thing I know for sure is that there is no shortage of things that I'm learning from my five year old daughter. I learned from Lennox that being kind doesn't have to be complicated. This summer my daughter and I were returning something at Walmart. I typically avoid doing retail returns because I hate returning things, perhaps my strong avoidance of doing returns comes from working years in retail management. Despite my hatred of returning things, here I stood in the customer service line with my five year old Lennox. The man in front of us was obviously having a rough day, or at least it would appear that way from how rude he was being to the poor cashier. My kids, like many kids, have zero filters in public which is both amusing and embarrassing depending on the situation. Lennox pipes up and says, “Why is that guy being so mean? He should just be kind to her mom.” The man abruptly turned around and glared at us, but there was no denying that my no filtered five year old was right. The simplicity of her statement really hit a chord in my heart and I thought about all the times adults preach loudly about kindness but how often do we actually put our words into practice? Sure there are times it's easy to be kind, it's easy to be kind to nice people but are we kind when it's difficult? Are we still kind when people aren’t polite to us? My five year old reminded me that kindness isn’t complicated, it is very simple to spread kindness every single day. The challenge is simply making the decision to be kind even when it's uncomfortable, the decision to be kind even when it's the road less traveled. One of the first lessons we teach our kids is the importance of sharing. We encourage them to share toys with their siblings, we encourage them to share their treats with their friends (during pre-pandemic times). When the pandemic hit everyone panicked, many adults in our population turned into selfish hoarders. I remember Lennox commenting on the somewhat humorous toilet paper shortage, “Everyone needs to wipe their bums, why can’t people just share toilet paper?” The truth is, I couldn’t really provide her with an answer to her rather simple question. In our pandemic panic, it was as if many Canadians had forgotten the very basic principles we learn in preschool. While I generally consider myself to be pretty good at sharing with others, her comments definitely had me questioning every purchase I made from that moment on. I think as we approach the Christmas season it would be helpful for us to find ways our families can incorporate sharing and giving to others. In recent years the news has been overflowing with stories of people who lack the basic ability to respect other people. We struggle to accept others who look or think differently than us, we exclude people who have different values than us simply because we feel entitled to do so. My five year old recently reminded me that we need to respect those who are different from us. At kindergarten pick up, I was watching my daughter's class and a game of tag broke out among her classmates and absolutely everyone was involved. No kids were left out of the chaos simply because the kids treated everyone on the playground with respect. The kids did not discriminate because of appearance or language barriers. In this Kindergarten game everyone was included, and without hesitation everyone was welcome to play. I made a comment to Lennox after school about how great I thought it was that her and her friends included everyone in their game. Lennox was a bit taken back by my comment, “Why wouldn’t we include everyone mom? It doesn’t matter if they are different from me, mom they obviously still know how to play tag.” I chuckled a little bit at her comment but as an adult it weighed heavy on my heart. A group of five year olds had grasped a concept that many adults can’t begin to understand. Did this group of loud kids care about race, religion, or body type? Absolutely not...they simply saw a group of kids that could play tag together, these kids recognized that regardless of our differences we are all still human. My five year old daughter has reminded me of so many valuable lessons. I have been reminded of how we should always choose to be kind, that kindness doesn’t have to be complicated. She has taught me that even when the world is in chaos, iis still important to share and not be selfish. The biggest lesson I've learned from Lennox is likely her lesson in respecting those who are different. When I thought more about my daughters comments on being kind and respecting others, I started to think about the upcoming battle ground parents are about to face. Childhood covid vaccinations are coming in the near future, and inevitably parent communities are about to be shaken to the core by a million different opinions and viewpoints. My challenge to you as parents is to sit down with your kids and have open conversations with them regarding the vaccination. Regardless of whether you plan to vaccinate your children or not, we need to be reminding our kids about what it means to respect others who may think differently than we do. The covid vaccination has divided so many adults and it has the potential to unintentionally cause division in our children. Talk about respecting others and what that means in terms of families who may make different choices than your own. When I became a parent, this was not something I envisioned having to navigate with my children and I'm sure most parents are feeling the same pressures to make the right decision for their family. In the coming days, let's try to remember the lessons from Kindergarten, choose kindness and choose to respect other people even who do things differently than we do.