Sparky has been showing some theological thinking recently.
When we explained that he would get to see the people he loved in heaven forever, he excitedly exclaimed he would see K____ (a girl from preschool last year) again.
He was putting on some check shorts yesterday, and said they must be church shorts. He is under the impression checks are for church, because the collared shirts he wears for church tend to have checks (the lack of imagination of boys' fashion manufacturers). He then nodded and said "yes, of course it's for the cross". I put a striped tee on him as well, and he said "ah! half a cross !" I didn't have the heart to discourage this interest in symbolism.
Scout has been saying I love you a lot, which is gorgeous. He also enjoys saying "that's mine" - or, if he doesn't want the item, it's "that's Sparky's!". Ah the human paradox -loving and selfish all in the same person!
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2 comments:
It's cute, but I don't know if I'd call it selfish. It's a necessary part of child development to see that things can be owned, and allocate them to various owners. He has to be able to see that something is his, if he's to understand the value of sharing later on.
If he never said 'mine', then he would never get to know the value of using that object with another person freely. He wouldn't be able to choose to share.
I see children as having both good and ill in their makeup, like us, in the image of God but prey to sin. At one moment I delight in the inherent, in born capacity to love and at the next sorrow at how early on we see the seeds of sin.
Their development is so inextricably bound up with what is good and sinful that I find it hard to take any strand of development and see it as part of either. In this case, while certainly ownership is an important concept, and we must also learn to respect the ownership of others', his use of that concept at the moment is entirely self focussed - and for some this self focus hardens while for others it gives way to an other focussed sharing.
It is good to see how already when told to share something with his brother, he does so, desiring to do so with part of himself, but still crying with the pain of giving it up himself.
I hope you don't think at the moment that we act with an inflexible harshness to his self focus - we tend more to laugh his thats mine off, firmly deal with any grabbing, while encouraging giving. What strikes us though is how surface a lot of the teaching and modelling children get about sharing - focussing on social acceptance rather than on learning to deny self and rejoice in giving. We hope and pray that we can do this better, knowing that we ourselves very often are sadly models of selfishness to them.
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