Every Mother's Day our church has child dedications. Yesterday we dedicated Chipmunk...he is young, but we figured,
hey, now is as good a time as any. So we stood up in front of the congregation as a family and read our prayer to God for Chipmunk. It was good for us to remember that raising our kids isn't just making sure they're fed and washed, but teaching them values and character and the importance of spiritual care.
Our church is a decent size, so it can be rather daunting standing up in front and having all eyes focused on you. Then again while I was reading our prayer, most of the congregation was focusing their attention on Bear. From the corner of my eye I noticed her walk up to our pastor and proudly announce, "Doh-dya!" as she handed Sonja over to him. There was some snickering from the pews and I could see people smiling. When I finished reading, our pastor introduced Sonja to the whole congregation much to the delight of Bear.
After service ended quite a number of people came up to remark how "not shy" Bear was. True. Most dedications I've witnessed the older siblings are trying their best to become permanently attached to their parents' legs. Bear wandered around the stage as if she owned it.
So even though the dedication was supposed to be for Chipmunk, Bear apparently stole the show. Sometimes I wonder if their sibling relationship is going to be like that with Bear "overshadowing" her brother most of the time and Chipmunk just going along with whatever Bear does.
It reminded me of a time four years ago when my sister, my cousin (along with her husband and their then three kids at the time), and I visited our mutual fifth grade teacher who was retiring after thirty something years. It was amazing to see how after all these years she still loved kids and treated them with so much respect. I was in awe of her teaching skills most especially watching her interact with my cousin's two oldest. They were inspecting a strange something she had on display and the 6 year old asked what it was. Instead of just telling him she asked, "what do you think it is?" His response was "a feather." And instead of ignoring the 4 year old who was watching quietly a couple of feet away, she turned to him and asked, "and how about you?" He said, "a feather." Then she did something that really struck me. She said, "that's what your brother thinks, but what do you think it is?" The 4 year old looked at it again, thought about it and said, "I guess it looks like a snake." She smiled and told them it was the shed skin of a snake. She then bent down to the 4 year old's level, tapped him on the nose, smiled and said, "you are your own person...you make sure that you always say what you think and not what your brother thinks, okay?" It was very important to her that each kid expressed their own opinion, not just that day with my cousin's kids, but also as we were her students.
Needless to say, I'm curious to see how things will turn out with Bear and Chipmunk. Perhaps one of these days Chipmunk will develop his own strong personality and fight it out with his sister...or perhaps he'll be the quiet type who keeps his thoughts to himself allowing his sister to overshadow who he is. If that's the case, I'll have to learn how to create teachable moments as my fifth grade teacher did in order to help out Chipmunk's thoughts and opinions. Sibling dynamics. Interesting. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how things progress with them. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.
Our Mother's Day family picture
