Lessons Learned

Paxton fought me tooth and nail about giving his talk on Mother's Day. I handed him the prose I had written for him to recite and sent him to the stand. It was obvious that he read it for the first time during the opening announcements. He muddled through and filled about 5 minutes of time. Whew! Glad that's over! He didn't receive the "great talk" response he revelled in 6 months earlier. Instead it was, "You could have read it more than once before stepping up to the pulpit." He knew he deserved every jab. I used this as a teaching moment. I asked him to think about how he prepared for each talk. With the first, we worked on it together. He came up with points and stories and I fine tuned the execution. This time it was only my ideas--my words. He immediately felt the difference. He decided that he would never give a talk in which he had no input. Of course his first choice would be to have no more speaking engagements. But that's not going to happen. The church uses the infamous "2 1/2 minute talk" to groom the youth for future leadership positions. It's a good thing!
Funny story--I had worked until very early in the morning and then had to take David to the airport so he could do roll call for Local 11. The kids were both taking the bus to school. When I came home from the airport I fell into bed, thrilled that Gabby was awake--she would make sure Paxton made it to the bus stop on time. I lay in bed listening with a half-awake mother's ear and I hear Paxton ask Gabby, "Did you know it's pajama day at school?" Gabby responded "No." He urged her on and let her know that it was announced on yesterday's announcements. She asked numerous questions trying to see if he was being completely honest. All I could do was hope I didn't have to get out of bed to take 2 kids to school because they showed up at the bus stop in sleepwear on the wrong day. After about 10 minutes of back and forth questioning it was revealed that in fact it was not pajama day, Paxton just wanted to see how far he could run with the story. Gabby had a tote with a change of PJ's, just in case.
Live and learn! I guess that's what this life is all about!