The Lesson Backfires....

We get to teach the Sunbeam class for our church, which is the group of kids turning 4 this calendar year. This means we teach the class with our girl in it. While some of the lessons are incredibly fun (like the one about animals where we made balloon animals for the kids), there are others that are a bit challenging, and don't necessarily have the effect we would like. The ones on family, and being nice to your brothers and sisters were a bit challenging for our girl, since she's the only kid in the class with no siblings, and felt sad about it. A couple weeks ago we had a lesson on obedience. We talked with the kids about how we live in families who love us and take care of us. We talked about how parents love their kids and how the kids need to obey their parents. We talked about small things like obeying when your mom asks you to clean up your toys, and big things like when your mom requests that you stay with her at the grocery store. Some things parents ask us to do are for our safety, and others are things they ask us to obey to help our families run smoothly. It was a great lesson, and we played Simon Says to practice obeying, and learned the song "When my mother calls me, quickly I'll obey". When we got home, I knew my girl had payed attention during the lesson, because she came and asked me to do something for her, like get her an ice cream cone. I told her no, that we weren't doing that right now. She gave me an interesting look, and said, "Mama, you have to apologize because you didn't obey me. When someone asks you to do something you are supposed to obey like we talked about in class. When I ask you that you are supposed to say, 'yes' and obey quickly. Now, let's try again" and proceeded to make her request a second time. I again told her no, and tried to explain that in the lesson we talked about obeying your parents. There is a difference between being an adult and being a child in the family. Unfortunately, my girl does not get this. I don't remember expecting my mom to obey me, but I think that was partly because there were a lot of us kids, and one mom, and we knew we had to obey her. As one of the older ones, we also got to 'boss' around the younger kids, so I guess we had a place in the hierarchy of the family, and it was easier because we weren't alone and outnumbered on the bottom.....So, we've been struggling with this. There are times where I try to be an example and say, "Yes, I will" when my girl asks me to do something, but there are also times when it just is a parenting thing, and she really needs to obey quickly. In thinking about it, I think this is another of those things that is a challenge for an only child, which I was not initially aware of. We spend so much time being on the same level, being friends doing things together. It is hard for my girl to understand that at times the Mom/daughter thing comes into play, and that I am the parent and she is the child. She loves to pretend that she is the mom and I am the child, but still is struggling with the 'quickly I'll obey' part of normal life. I think part of that is normal for kids to figure out, and it sure is funny when she tries to use the lesson I taught her in class to explain why she should get to stay up late, watch movies, and do all kinds of other things she asks to do because she asked nicely and said please. So, I guess that lesson didn't really work the way I thought it would, and we'll have to keep figuring out how to teach 'obey your parents' as we go!