Values

"Can I wash the dishes?" my seven-year-old granddaughter asked when she saw me standing at the sink.  We were baby-sitting her and her big sister, and their parents were running late.

"No, I want to get these finished by the time the cake gets done," I responded.  During an episode of "The Waltons," we had been watching, their pa pa asked for cake, and suggested I make one.  I at first demurred, but then decided to whip up another half recipe of a chocolate sheet cake.

It seemed a good time to wash the supper dishes I had left.  Going to the stove to wipe it down, I turned around to see her busily washing some dishes, suds up to her elbows.

Oh well, it's a teaching moment, I thought, of which there had been many this evening.  The family-style program seemed like a good choice, but it's amazing what you notice when you look at it from a child's perspective.  "Is she in love with him?" the eight-year-old questioned when a female character seemed too friendly with John Walton.  A little later, she exclaimed, "They're too young to be married!" of a Walton boy and his bride.

Entering the kitchen earlier, she held up a magazine, and pointing to her younger sister, said, "Should she be looking at this?"  I recognized the magazine I had bought on a whim because it had a cover picture of the sextuplets so popular on a recent television series, mistaking it for a news magazine of the same color and format.  I told her the magazine wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, either, so she laid it aside and came to watch the cake proceedings.

"How do you call that making a cake?" she asked, as she watched me melt the butter and cocoa together. Then, when she saw me get a cup of sugar, she remarked, "That's a lot of sugar," to which I replied, "Well, there's a lot of sugar in cakes!"   A cake made from scratch is somewhat educational, it seems.

During a commercial break, an ad came on for a chocolate hazelnut spread, similar to the one I had in the kitchen that I was going to use for cake icing.  "Look," I said, "Someone else is making that spread."

"Little pitchers have big ears," is true, I guess, because soon I heard the smaller girl telling her sister as she pointed to the jar of hazelnut spread on the counter, "See, that's the one the people on TV copied!" she exclaimed, "The meanies!"

Looking at the clock, rule-oriented granddaughter #1 said in alarm, "It's only forty minutes to our bedtime!  We go to bed at 8:30! Can I call Dad?"  Dad said they were 15 minutes away, but they got here in ten, so I'm sure they were tucked in on time.

How much children absorb as they are trying to sort out guidelines and moral principles for themselves! Especially these children so recently adopted! And what a big job it is for parents today as the world bombards kids in all forms of media with oppositional ideas from what may be taught at home! Thank God for the church and responsible parents and other adults who have this precious charge!