Lessons From Our Kids

The topic for this blog post came from my stepchildren through our conversation over dinner tonight. Kids are so good at keeping us reigned in to the simple, basic ideas that we as adults tend to turn into complicated, over-thought worries.

Not too long ago I made a huge mistake that required my husband to rescue me. Katie and Collin were with him at the time and they love to tease me about it every chance they get. My mistake was that I let my car run out of gas while I was driving, thinking I could make it to the next town before stopping at a gas station. I passed by three gas stations (as the kids LOVE to remind me) between where I started and where I ran out of gas.

Katie and Collin are 8 and 9 years old. The thought patterns of 8 and 9 year

old kids seem to bounce from one topic to another like a ping pong ball, so it’s not surprising that the road traveled over dinner conversation is a bit…um…crooked. Collin was talking about hearing his grandmother say that people are dying in this heat (if you’re reading from a different region, we’ve been under an extreme heat wave this week). His dad said you have to drink lots of water when you’re out in heat like that, and I chimed in with a comment about listening to your body and giving it what it tells you it needs. Somehow, from that, Katie chimed in about me passing THREE GAS STATIONS and running out of gas. And Collin asked if my car dinged at me to tell me it was almost out of fuel. I said, “Yes, it did, and I didn’t listen to it and didn’t give it what it told me it needed so it quit on me.”

 

Somehow there was a natural tie-in from one topic to the other. If your body is out in the heat and it tells you it needs water and cooler air, you’d better listen to it and give it what it asks for or it’ll quit on you, just like my car did when I didn’t give it what it told me it needed. Our bodies are amazing machines.

I will probably take the time another day to write a more detailed, well-thought-out article on the subject of listening to your body. For right now I just wanted to share this story just like it is to keep it simple the way kids do. I love coming home from a long day of working with adults and concepts that drain me to the refreshing happy energy of the kids.