A Lesson from a Smart Boy

Yesterday Oliver woke up with a bad tummy ache and it wasn't feeling better by school time. We decided he should stay home from school.

After dropping off the other kids and heading back into the house, Oliver remarked, "Wow, it's quiet in here." Yep. I told him it would be the perfect day for him to catch up on his reading (he was behind a little in his reading log for the week) and told him I'd need to get some work done while he was reading but we'd do some fun stuff later if he was feeling better. He took off to read and I sat down at my computer.

A few minutes later he came in and presented me with this list of the things he planned to get done while the other kids were at school. He thought of all this completely by himself:

Here's the translation in case his handwriting and spelling don't make things clear:
1. Reading 47 minutes (this is how far he was behind in his reading log).
2. Raz Kids is an online reading program he loves - and I appreciated that he realized he'd need to work on that on his own while I did my work.
3. Sum Dog is an online math program he loves.
4. Wonders of the World is a coffee table book full of amazing nature photography and Oliver said he hadn't looked at it in way too long.
5. Reef movie is a DVD all about fish that we got a couple Christmases ago and I'd forgotten about (as he was watching it, I kept hearing him in the other room loudly ooing and ahing nad at the end he said "That movie had no words but I still learned so much. I think it's my favorite movie now.")
6. Hug mom for 18 seconds.
7. Kiss mom 8 times (and read Reef book that goes with the DVD).
8. Play 1 song.
9. Play a game with mom.
10. Do a puzzle with mom.

After smiling at this very cute list and praising Oliver for coming up with so many great ideas, I was a little concerned that my chatty little partner and his list might make it hard for me to get the stuff done on my list but you know what? I realized that some of the stuff on Oliver's list mattered a lot more that some of the stuff on my list so I did a little revising of my list. And the great news is that we got to everything on Oliver's list - but we substituted a nice jog (me)/bike ride (Oliver) for the puzzle since it was such a nice day.

I guess Oliver's been paying attention to my example of daily list-making. And I'm paying attention to Oliver's example of  including relationship-building activities on the list, not just work-oriented and household-oriented stuff. I think I'm going to start adding stuff like "give an 18 second hug" and "play a game with my kids" to my "must-do" lists each day. Thanks for the lesson, Ollie!