On the day after Thanksgiving, I’m thankful that my children are learning my green values and that I get to spend holidays at my mother’s house. We live about four hours from the closest family, so it’s really a treat to be able to sleep in and know that other people will take care of my children, get them dressed, feed them a good breakfast, etc.
This morning I came down to find my all children well fed, mostly dressed and watching tv in the kitchen. Awesomeness! Then my 3 year-old looks up at me and says, “Mommy, I came upstairs but the light is on.”
Understanding toddler talk, I asked him “In the basement? Do you want me to turn it off?”
With big eyes: “Yes. Are you hungry?”
What a sweet question! I said to him, “Yes”
So he responded, very matter-of-factly “Then eat.”
I was so pleased that he remembered to tell someone that he left the light on in the basement, that I went right down to turn it off. When I was a kid we used the basement playroom, but it had since become a storage room. With the basement flooding in recent storms, my parents had a lot of work to do to clean up down there. Having refinished the basement, they turned it back into a playroom for the grandkids. This trip was the first time my children have ever had a playroom of their own. When I took Timmy down, I made a big point of telling him that we always turn the light out when we leave, even if we think we’re coming back down, because we might get distracted and not come back down. It really made me glad this morning to know that he listened to what I said, and remembered. It is not his fault that he cannot yet reach the light switch to turn it off himself.
Teach your children your values and what you believe every day, in every thing you do.
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you’ll know by.
Teach your children what you believe in.
Make a world that we can live in.
– Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Happy Greening,
Alicia
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