Lessons

This weekend we visited family in Virginia.  My sister told my son that he could earn points for doing some chores and she would take him to buy a new video game.  My son, ever the hustler, devised this list of chores and with my sister's help assigned points to each chore.  One of the chores he came up with was to polish the shoes.  He told her he knew how to do this, which was news to me, since we never do it.  We have the supplies, but I never think about it.  Its weird, when I was a child my parents wouldn't let us leave the house unless we could see our reflection in our shoes.  I clearly remember my mom sitting me down and teaching me how to shine my shoes.   Nowadays, children usually wear sneakers (well, at least my child) and don't really need to know how to shine shoes.  So, I had never instructed him.

This gave me the perfect opportunity.  It got me thinking about a lot of things that children don't get the opportunity to learn and perfect anymore because of modern day conveniences and changes in standards.  Things like ironing, answering a telephone (we got rid of our house phone a while back, but recently got a line again), writing script (they don't teach it in certain places) and I'm sure there are more.  These are things I will have to teach him.  I think he did really well with the shoes though and he earned some points in the process!