The other day I was home with the youngest two and found Samuel running around with a sucker. As is often the case (shhhh, don't tell) he had snuck into his sister's candy stash and helped himself. I gave him my usual spill about not taking things that aren't his and blah, blah, blah.
Not too long after, I happened to find Claire running around with the previously mentioned sucker. So. I relaunched my little speech about why we can't eat the sucker because it's not ours.
To which Claire replied, "I know! But I can't help it! It tastes too good!"
Well. I found myself with a teaching opportunity and so I pounced. I explained that she could help it. In fact, I taught- that is one of the reasons we came to Earth- so that we could learn to control our desires.
Perfectly age appropriate terms and everything.
Of course, she wanted to know what in the heck a "desire" was. I decided to give it another go, explaining that a desire was something we wanted really, really bad. But sometimes the things we desire are not good for us, or they might be against the rules. Sometimes, what we really want (like eating a sucker that isn't ours) is dishonest. But Heavenly Father knows that we can have control over our desires and so we need to practice choosing the right even when it is hard.
I was feeling quite pleased with my parenting efforts when she astounded me with this, "Oh, I get it. Like I want to swear really, really bad all the time. But I shouldn't do it, because the devil wants me to! Huh, mom!"
(As a side note, this girl has popped off with some pretty big *#@*! words a few times. Silly me, I always thought it was doing chores with Grandpa that led her to it, but now I realize it was the devil the whole time :)
No comments:
Post a Comment