So my son had a choice to make. He needed to pick a class for his week long intersession at school. His choices were a class where he got to play and do sports all day, learn about holidays from around the world in which they would have two celebrations a day including parties and parades, a dance class (I knew he would not be interested in that one) or a class called Pay It Forward. In the last class the students would be doing community service, on the list was help at nursing home, humane society, local parks and food shelves.
I had hoped he would prove that all the time I spent trying to teach him the importance of helping people and animals had set in, at least a little bit. After a couple minutes of reading his list I was rewarded with a “Hey mom, I really want to do the Pay It Forward class, please!!!” “We get to go to a nursing home, maybe we will go see Great Grandpa!” I had to tell him that the chances that they would go to the nursing home Grandpa moved into this past year were slim as it was not near the school. He often talks about Grandpa and likes to go visit him. Grandpa doesn’t talk much and his interest can only be held for about 5 minutes and I don’t know that he always knows who I am but he always knows who Jack is and lights up like a Christmas tree when Jack walks in. His eyes get teary and it breaks my heart, I know my son sees this too but he also sees that Grandpa is happy to see him. So he understands they probably won’t be going there but he is still excited because he knows that all the folks in the nursing home get a smile on their faces when we walk in.
He thinks he will get to clean up a park and that it will be cool to get it ready for the little kids, him being 8 of course means he is no longer one of those little kids. He has to look out for all those pull-up wearing munchkins. He likes animals but really loves animals in need, he cries during the commercials for neglected animals and it often ends up with us collecting all his change and bringing it to the humane society. When he was 3 1/2 years old a couple weeks after Easter he told me he quit candy, he wanted to take all his Easter candy and give it to the food shelf for the kids. That was our first trip there. I have often taken him and a bag of groceries to our local food shelf to make a donation, his preschool was in the same old school building so we did that several times while he was going there and a few times a year now. Our chiropractor often has a food drive and Jack loves cleaning out our cupboards for that.
So I’d like to think that I helped instill some of this compassion into my son, at least some. I also think that some of it is just Jack, just a part of him. The same way he seemed to teach himself to read and do math by the time he was 3 with little help from me, I read to him and counted with him but at that age I didn’t get serious about it, he nonetheless he learned on his own. Nature vs nurture, why does it have to versus? Do we have to choose? I think they work pretty darn well together.
I am very proud of my boy!
