From the Mouths of Babes

by Edna
(Boynton Beach, FL, USA)

My youngest daughter always loved to be surrounded by literature. From the very beginning she loved for me to read to her. She would memorize the books and she learned to read at an early age.

She also loved music. I rarely had the television on when she was growing up, but I always had the radio on or a tape or CD playing.

I played all sorts of music and she seemed particularly fond of the oldies. By oldies I mean from the 50’s and 60’s era.

She also loved to dance to this music and her creative side began to show at a young age. She would make special cards for me and all the cute little things that kid’s do that mothers cherish and save forever.

When she was in the second grade her teacher asked the class to draw a picture story of something in their life that was important to them.

When she brought her story home it was accompanied by a note from her teacher and at first I was terrified that she had used her creative mind to come up with something embarrassing or worse yet, something that would take some heavy explaining on my part.

But as I read further and looked at her work, tears welled up in my eyes and I couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

She had drawn a picture of her memories of potty training of all things, showing her on the potty in her special little training chair.

And the next picture was of her in the same chair but crying and I was standing over her. I began to get nervous.

My first thought was that I was scolding her for having an accident and she was crying.

I felt awful that this would be an important memory in her life. But then the next picture showed a speaking bubble over my head asking her why she was crying.

The last picture was her saying to me, “Mommy, it’s my potty and I’ll cry if I want to”.

Her teacher gave her an A+ and I gave her a huge hug. That’s my girl.