Being Trusted By A Child

Last week, a boy who I've only known for a few days called out to me "Mommy, look!" as he drew my attention to how he'd successfully installed a pirate flag on our sandpit row boat, before correcting himself sheepishly, "I mean, Teacher Tom, look!"

At least once a day a child will call me "dad" or "daddy," or more rarely, "mom" or "mommy." There is nothing that flatters me more. Usually it happens in a moment of excitement, perhaps in the midst of an ah hah event, or when I'm being invited to share in a personal celebration of an achievement or creation, like a pirate flag being installed in a sandpit row boat.

I take it as evidence that I've earned a place as an important adult; never, of course, as important as a parent, but at least as an acceptable surrogate. I try to remain always conscious of the incredible honor it is to be entrusted with these children of loving parents, but it's when these slip-ups occur that I'm most aware of the even greater honor of being trusted by a child.

I think I earn that trust by listening.

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what.  If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, then they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.   ~Catherine M. Wallace

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