Anything can be a teachable moment

Let’s just say, it was not one of my prouder moments as a Mom. But, I can explain. My oldest was in first grade, and he, along with his 4-year-old brother had just discovered the movie, Home Alone. And they were fascinated by the scene where the little boy, valiantly and cleverly protected himself by scaring away the bad guys with the audio portions of Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) starring James Cagney.

This all happened around the same time that my little first grader was figuring out how to put letters together to make words, and that those symbols in his favorite books had a purpose. So, he wrote this note, and posted it on our front door:

(He meant, “heck.”) I, of course, didn’t know it was there. I had a newborn in the house, and I was just a tad busy . For two days it was there for the pleasure of our mailman, the newspaper man, and any salesman that came by and decided not to knock. I finally discovered it, when the doorbell rang, and there, on my step, was my son’s reading teacher. She was stopping by to treat him to ice cream for doing such a swell job.