Lessons From My 7 Year Old - You Have More Than Not

It’s often said that you can learn a lot from kids. Most often, I think people mean that kids can offer a perspective long gone to most of us. But I also found we can learn a lot about ourselves from kids. More specifically, in watching them navigate the hurdles of exaggerated emotional infancy we can be brought face-to-face with our own.

Take, for example, my 7 year old recently falling into deep cataclysmic despair, where he questioned the fairness of his younger brother getting just a few more minutes of screen time. Never acknowledging the circumstances that led to him getting the additional 4 minutes and 30 seconds of Bluey in the first place - spoiler it was his battery.

But never once thinking that him even having a tablet of his own in the first place was monumental, or appreciating the hour or so of screen time he was enjoying prior to it being so egregiously shut off, let alone recognizing that the screen time he was so heartbroken and agonizing over was during a drive out to a family resort up in cottage country for a weekend away.

And therein I saw a glimpse of myself, of my own emotional fragility, as someone who I sometimes find complaining and commiserating over all of life’s injustices that I may at times feel burdened with, all the while living with more means than most turn-of-the-century monarchs. Living a life that is safer, more stable, and by all measures better than most could even dream of in parts of the world today. Occupying a reality that would exceed even the dreams of most who ever lived in our short but vast human experience.

It’s here that I think of that 7 year old crying, where I recognize and see my own flaws and am reminded of my own ingratitude and lack of perspective. At least, in his defense, he’s only 7.