One of the aspects of staying at home with my children that I have come to not only enjoy but be so thankful for is time. Some working mothers run out of time as fast as sand flows out of your open hand, and then the game of catchup begins grasping at the little pebbles of sand dust that have already flown into the wind. Opportunities are lost. They are gone, and those moments can always be re-created, however, difficult to take naturally occurring situations and make them not seem contrived, manipulated or awkward. I’ve heard Time is Money. But I’ll throw a new twist on it, and in our home: Time is Virtue.
Losing teeth is a natural, normal occurrence in childhood. All children will lose those baby teeth, and grow permanent teeth. If you’re busy, and time is often lost as if standing in that quick sand-box, you will regard losing teeth as a normal occurrence that doesn’t require long boring lectures on virtue.
However, as a Stay at Home Mom at Work, I’ll tell you, every stage in a child’s life, every small detail of a day, can be viewed as an opportunity. It takes time. You must be paying attention to what is happening around you, and look for opportunities to help your child grow and learn.
Serious has been working hard on wiggling a loose tooth. Every day, she has been presenting herself, mouth open wide, to ask me, “Is it ready, yet, Mom? Can we pull it out?”
To which I almost always respond, “Almost, honey, keep working on it.”
Truth be told, I’m not a fan of sticking my fingers in kids’ mouths, wiggling teeth, making my child squirm from pain, or making her teeth bleed. I generally encourage them to keep working on it, and eventually they end up pulling it all by themselves. In the past HH has helped some of the kids to pull out their loose teeth, as new ones were making their way in and he hastened the process for them.
Last week, as usual, Serious presented her tooth to me, wiggling it from side to side with her tongue, asking me, “Is it ready?”
I looked carefully, and sure enough it was ready to go. I told her, “Yep, it’s ready.”
She asked me, “Would Dad pull it out for me?”
I said, “Probably, ask him tonight.”
When HH came home, he examined the little girl’s mouth, but instead of yanking that tooth right out, he wanted to empower her to do for herself. He refused to pull it for her. She literally begged him to do it. He told her, “You can do this. Pull hard. It WILL come out.”
She was frustrated with her father to say the least. She wanted it over. She wanted someone else to do it. Hearing the commotion in the kitchen, I came in to see what was going on, and then simply told her, “Perhaps it just needs one more day. Give it one more day.”
She didn’t like that.
She didn’t want to wait one more day.
She wanted the Tooth Fairy to visit that night, but with no one to do this task for her, tears began to fall.
As a little of my heart broke for her, I asked HH, “You REALLY don’t want to pull it?”
HH responded, “No, I want her to do it herself.” He looked me straight in the eye, and said one word, “Accomplishment.”
Ok, he saw an opportunity. I’ll go with this one. I hugged little Serious, gave her encouragement, and said, “Honey, we know you can do it. Show Dad, one good pull, and it will come out.”
She tried. God love her, she tried, through her tears she gave good yank after good yank, to only be sent to bed still moving that little tooth forward, then back, forward then back. After good night kisses, HH and I walked back down stairs, and he told me, “She’s got to believe that she CAN do this and when she does, her confidence in herself will soar.”
“Yeah. She’ll do it.” I told him, even though it killed me to put a child to bed still with wet tears on her cheeks.
Not five minutes past, and we heard a running of feet upstairs, then bounding down the steps, running at full force towards us….yep it was Serious. Her face was bright red, her smile was marked from ear to ear, and with her fist tightly protecting something, she began screaming, “I DID IT! I DID IT!”
She opened her hand to reveal a bloodied little tooth. I looked at her face, and with that big smile, blood poured out of that little hole she created. She actually shook from excitement. I took the tooth from her hand, hugged her and both HH and I congratulated her on her accomplishment, telling her, “We knew you could do it.”
Kids too need to see themselves succeed on their own merit. Her confidence rose to new heights that day. She knows, she can accomplish her goals. If ever in doubt, she can look to this day and know she did it all on her own. She is capable. She is strong.
As years will pass, she might forget this day, but I won’t. It’s one of those little treasures that I will keep tucked away in my back pocket for just the right moment. Perhaps she’ll need this little reminder of how strong and determined she really is, maybe when she’s 12 years old and struggling with something, or 16 and facing peer pressure or whatever the case might be.
I’ve got a gold mine in my back pocket: Little ways that each child had conquered something in their lives because of their determination, their hard work or their faith that God is with them. I’m storing them up, I know in years to come, I’ll need them. I need to demonstrate how even in their past, they have been able to conquer, and still can. It’s in them. They CAN do it.
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