A lesson for all of us
Last Sunday I was wrapping up my soundbooth duties at my church when I was approached by Elise, my friends’ 3-year-old daughter. She started chatting with me, telling me what she did in Sunday school, if I was going to be visiting later that day, etc. Before she left with her parents, she gave me a folded piece of red construction paper that was sealed with a sticker, and found the words to tell me not to open it until I got home.
Believe me when I say that I definitely didn’t open it until later. I have been given many pieces of art from kids aged 1-4 before, most without any sense of logic behind them. Not downplaying the art that the kids make, mind you, it’s just that I don’t always understand what they draw, and they can’t always comprehend what they were doing when they created the piece. Nothing wrong with that. However, I usually end up tossing the art away, whether I understood it or not. I pretty much forgot about the red piece of paper until the next day, when I was getting ready for work, and found it in my coat pocket.
I was greeted with this:
Obviously, that’s not her handwriting on the bottom, but I know she knows what the words mean.
I’m sure thousands if not millions of parents already know this one, but don’t take a child’s gift for granted, even if it appears to be nothing more than a slip of construction paper.
January 11, 2012 at 12:59 PM
There was once a time when, like the picture says, a friendly “Thank you for being my friend” meant a lot. Now, with all those Facebook and other social media networks, the sentence doesn’t really mean that deep. True friendship’s face has been overlapped by so-called Facebook friends term.
January 11, 2012 at 1:07 PM
Granted, the child in question doesn’t have a Facebook page, as she’s only three, but yes, I can agree with your comment. The times have certainly changed, and not all for the better. I mentioned in a past post that I don’t even feel comfortable telling people “happy birthday” on Facebook, because I believe it’s better to express it in another way. Children really do have a way of expressing themselves and their thoughts better, and as adults we tend to forget about that or ignore it, and become lazy with our expressions. Facebook has indeed become a way to feed that laziness, but I think even before Facebook, adults tended to forget how much a simple message like this can mean to someone.
January 11, 2012 at 4:31 PM
I would have to agree. I know that I feel like sometimes my true appreciation does not come out to the people I care about, so instead they get facebook posts and random other things that are jsut me trying to say I enjoy you.