This will probably be a familiar story for busy parents. At the end of the day yesterday, my younger son and I were sitting downstairs in our ‘person’ cave. (It’s 2018, after all.) He is a night owl, which is at turns hilarious and enervating.
After some protracted negotiations regarding an approach to his evening chambers, he looked at my laptop and asked “what do you do on your computer?”
“Well, I email our members and coaches…I watch exercise videos, I read and write things, I answer messages…right now I’m looking at payroll.”
He’s 7. A lot of the stuff I say goes in one ear and out the other. Then again, he’s 7. Most of the stuff he says is of paramount importance to him.
“I wish you would put that away,” he said. “I wish you would be with ME.”
You know how that felt. A kid with love and disappointment in his eyes. A kid who wants more. At the end of a long day, that’s either a knife in the gut or it’s a challenge. For whatever reason, I got a bright idea.
“Listen…I have an idea. How about you tell ME a bedtime story?”
Without spoiling the adventures of two great explorers in search of buried treasure, I will say that was the best bedtime story I’ve ever heard, and I fell asleep as quickly as I have in months after he finished what we’ve determined was Part One.
Sometimes, with yourself, with the people you love…maybe it’s just about asking a different question.
I can’t wait for Part Two.