Tom Naughton

I got married relatively late in life, and now I have two little girls.  As a parent, you look forward to passing on all your accumulated wisdom to your children. It’s a little early for that, but in the meantime, I’ve learned quite a few lessons from them. Here are a few samples:

• If something is delicious, eat it without hesitation or guilt – and don’t assume anything isn’t delicious until you’ve plucked it from the floor and tasted it.
• If you’re bored, don’t sit around and mope … re-arrange your environment! You can start by dumping all the books on the floor, which will encourage you to begin that alphabetizing project you’ve been putting off.
• After a good nap, things that upset you a couple of hours ago won’t seem so bad.
• Don’t take glorious sights like a full moon for granted just because they’re common. Bounce up and down, point to it and yell, “Moon! Moon! Moon!” This will help others appreciate it as well.
• Chewing on a box of food is almost as much fun as eating the real thing, especially if there’s a picture on it. Cardboard is a low-carbohydrate food, plus you’ll burn a few calories gnawing on it.
• If you try over and over and over, you’ll go places and get your hands on things the bigger and smarter people swore you couldn’t.
• When you get hurt, cry with gusto for about two minutes, then forget the whole thing and move on to something else.
•  Anything in your environment can be a toy if you decide it is. Boxes, paper towels, shoe strings, feminine napkins, entire rolls of toilet paper – they can all provide hours of entertainment with a little imagination. (And if you’re relatively dexterous, you can stick the napkins to your chin and tell people you’re growing a beard.
• When you talk about the people you love, focus on the positive. For example, “I like leaning on Daddy’s belly, because it’s big and soft like a pillow.”
•  When you hear a song you like, wave your arms, stomp your feet, and shake your booty with abandon. If other people laugh at you, that’s their problem.
•  When you’re hurt, the people who really love you will hug and kiss you, even if you don’t smell very good at the time.
•  If no one’s kissed you lately – even though you smell fabulous – you can always kiss your reflection in the mirror. You can also talk to the mirror when other people don’t understand what you’re saying.
•  If the people you live with are always hogging the remote, hide it from them. Under the sofa is a good spot.
•  If you spread a few cashews around when you have more than you need, they’ll turn up later in unexpected places, and this will make you happy.
•  When you give advice, use clear examples. If your little sister is chewing on her hair, you could say something like, “Don’t chew on your hair! You’ll go bald like Daddy!”
•  A fancy vocabulary is overrated. A short sentence with simple words can often say everything that needs saying.
•  Whenever you try something new, there’s a good chance you’ll fall down and bump your head. But even a baby knows that’s no reason to quit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Kids & Parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.