The holidays are upon us and the Homeskoolie guys wish you a very Merry Christmas and a blessed advent season!  What a busy year it’s been.  From conferences this summer to building our internet store and writing our first curriculum (which will be ready in January) we’ve been really busy, not to mention leading homeschool families and other work commitments to pay the bills while we get Homeskoolie up and running!

If you’re anything like us, life is just hectic and while we all love the holidays, they can also be a time of stress.  It would be nice if life was like the cover of a Hallmark Christmas card, but then, hey, it probably wouldn’t be life.  It’d be more like heaven which, by the way, we’re really looking forward to this time of year!

Isn’t it odd that a season of expectation and joy often seems to be marked by busyness and stressfulness?  Maybe you’ve got it together.  If you do, that’s really great.  But I don’t.  And in the midst of the holiday hustle and bustle, sometimes I find myself falling into habits that I wish I didn’t: impatience, shortness of speech, frustration, things that all too often find their mark on those who don’t deserve it.

So here’s our gift to you this season.  This stirring reminder of the importance of encouraging our children was written by W. Livingston Larned and was reprinted from Reader’s Digest in Dale Carnegie’s famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  You may have read it before, but it’s worth a read again…

Father Forgets

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you.  I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.  You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!”

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby.  Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

I hope that you are encouraged this holiday season to savor every moment with your family as the precious gift that it is and as you begin a new year that you remember one of the greatest gifts that we can give our children is investing our lives in them.  Merry Christmas, and to quote another classic text, “God Bless Us, Every One!”