My four-year old son, Brooks, is in pre-school, and has recently wrapped up his first trimester of the year. With that comes a parent-teacher conference and a report card. I had his parent-teacher conference a few weeks ago. It took about two minutes. At his age there really isn’t much to go over other than he’s making progress learning his letters and he’s making it to the bathroom more often than not. Proud to say he’s successful on both accounts. He brought his report card home this week, and it pretty much echos the teacher’s sentiments, with ether “Developing” or “Mastered” market in every category. However, there was one category which he has apparently mastered that got my attention – “Christ-like Attitude.”
I should point out that the pre-school Brooks goes to is part of a Christian school. So in addition to colors, shapes, letters, and numbers, they also learn how to be like Jesus. Which apparently my son is just killing it at. I mean, mastering a Christ-like attitude at the age of four is some prodigy level piety. Is my son the Doogie Howser of Christianity?
Goes to show you, you can learn something new about your kids everyday. And apparently also about Jesus. You see, I never knew that it was particularly Jesusy to walk up to your father at random and punch him in the misters, or to pout when somebody chooses to watch Puppy Dog Pals and not SuperKitties. Who knew? Though I guess I could see it. Toddler sized Jesus losing his mind at Mary because he wanted to wear the off-white tunic with a tan sash and not the taupe tunic with the brown sash. Who knows how many times Joseph took one in the dangle while he was minding his own business carving a table? Part of me wants to believe at least once, right? Little Jesus hauls off with a “you’re not my real dad!” and slugs him below the sash. I think we just learned why there are no stories of toddler Jesus in the bible.
I also found it interesting that while he has mastered a Christ-like attitude, for “Obeys Authority” he was marked as “Developing.” Feels like he should walk before he runs. Don’t get me wrong, great that my son is so closely modeling the big JC, but it would also be really great if he mastered sitting still at the kitchen table when we tell him to. If my Bible knowledge is correct, somewhere in there it says “Children, obey your parents.” Though to be fair, it isn’t written in red. My son is Christ-like, not Ephesian-like.
Also, it occurs to me that the teacher must have graded some kids lower on their Messianic dispositions. There has to be a spectrum of attitudes among all the kids, and giving every kid a “Mastered” feels disingenuous. We aren’t talking about handing out participation grades for raising their hands and share time, this is a teacher assessing how much like Jesus these children are. Telling the parents of some little heathen that their kid has mastered their Christ-like attitude isn’t just lazy teaching, but I’m pretty sure it’s a sin. No teacher wants that on their conscience. So how does that come up in the parent teacher conference? “Billy is doing great with his counting and ABC’s, but I’m sorry to say he’s he’s on a slippery slope to hell.”
I’d be curious to see what the Christ-like mastery looks like on the middle school and high school report cards. Something tells me there is likely some backsliding. Right now Brooks is just a sweet little boy (outside of his latest favorite game of Punch Daddy) who doesn’t have a mean bone in his still-baby-pudge-covered body, but how Christ-like will he be when he’s a sixteen year-old dingus? Methinks not very. Though, he’ll be in the public school by then, so he won’t be graded officially on it. Just judged eternally.
I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. At least I will. At this pace Brooks might just walk right across the water.
But seriously folks, as parents we want to find the best in our children and encourage them to develop it. Usually it is a talent. If our kid is interested in music we sign them up for band, or choir, or piano lessons. If our kid shows interest in sports we start working on them young lest they not make the travel team ten years from now. But it is incredibly important to encourage the develop of attitudes, not just abilities. It seems my son is off to a pretty good start, so now we need to work on it. Even if he does have a pretty good arm for a little guy, the odds of him being a great baseball player when he grows up are very low. The odds of him being a great person are much higher.
I Think Therefore I Dad 