I constantly find myself telling my four year old to pay
attention. Stop fooling around. Don’t look at the TV. Put that down and PAY
ATTENTION.
But I’m not a very good example. When he talks to me (and he talks A
LOT), I’m working on the computer, playing on my phone, reading the paper,
reading a magazine, looking at the TV, cooking dinner, cleaning up, or doing
laundry. So asking him to pay attention to me is one of those “do as I say, not
as I do” scenarios.
It’s important that I do pay attention at the key moments,
like every once in a while one of those “Mom, look at this” requests is
actually for something worthwhile and cool. Like the abstract horse he made out LEGOs. Or the hat he made out of tinker toys. Of course, like the boy who cried
wolf, only 2 out of about 500 of the hollers actually are something important.
I truly don’t want to miss the amazing things that he does.
I also don’t really want to miss the mundane things he does. But none of us can
give 100% attention to 100% of things all the time. And no, I really don't need to see what Spongebob just did.
But I guess when I tell him to pay attention, I need to be
mindful of what I’m doing when he says it to me... and I should probably cut him a little slack.
