wisdom from an 8 year old

Our oldest grandson, Christopher, celebrated his eighth birthday earlier this month and it was our privilege to help him celebrate in person this year. I absolutely love that childhood birthdays are looked forward to, a time of anticipation and great delight. Somewhere along the road of life, we lose that exuberance for being a bit older, for blowing out one more candle on the cake and proudly telling anyone who asks how old we are. But at age eight, birthdays are FUN!!

Instead of a party with his friends, Christopher wanted to see Smurfs in 3-D with his family.

(With six people in their family, going to a movie theater is a very special treat!)

When I went in Christopher and Ben's room to get them up on the morning of his birthday, I discovered Christopher dressed in a button-down shirt, tie, jeans and wearing his good shoes. Normally I find him in his boxers (what he sleeps in) and have to convince him to get dressed if we're not going somewhere. He told me he got dressed before he went to sleep the night before so he would be dressed up for his WHOLE birthday. Yep... he slept in his clothes... but NOT his shoes, he assured me! When was the last time you wanted to celebrate your WHOLE birthday, to not miss even a minute of it?!?!

He may be a year older but he still likes to make silly faces!

Christopher has lots of friends at school and in their neighborhood.  Some are girls (but he's only had two girlfriends!) and some are boys. He told me the most important thing he's learned about friendship is that "you never cheat on your friends. If you promise you'll give them something, you don't trick them." Wouldn't the world be a much better place if grown-ups understood that concept and lived by it? I wonder if all children know this but somewhere in the journey to adulthood our selfish desires convince us it's a childish notion.

**Notice the "11 ft" marker!**

Christopher (and brothers and sister) took swimming lessons this summer. Some children are risk-takers or dare-devils... Christopher is not one of them. He's naturally cautious and jumping into a pool of water deeper than he is tall was not his idea of fun. In fact, it terrified him. After the first session of lessons, try as he might, he just couldn't jump into the deep end of the pool and his dad had to toss him in. The last day of the second session was right before his birthday and we were there to watch. It took him a few moments to get enough courage to jump, but finally, with a smile on his face he jumped off the diving board into eleven feet of  water... not just once, but several times! He told me afterwards that "the secret is to keep doing what you're afraid of because it gets less scary." Hmmm... more wisdom we "forget" as we "mature?"

Christopher... a young man with BIG dreams!

One of my favorite things to ask kids is what they want to be when they grow up. Christopher told me he wanted to be an artist- a much more realistic goal than his three year-old sister's... to be a kangaroo! His answer was not surprising to me since art is his passion (his mom sometimes takes away his art supplies as punishment!). But when I rephrased my query asking  what he was looking forward to doing when he was a grown up, I realized he had spent some time thinking and dreaming about this; it's not just the "career of the week" answer. He wants to "open a restaurant named 'Christopher's Place' and do all the artwork inside." Will he do this? I don't know. But I certainly think it's within the realm of possibility. LeAnn Rimes decided at age eight, after seeing Reba McEntire's show, that she wanted to be a performer. Herb Alpert, at age eight,  began practicing every day to be a musician and performer. And Academy Award nominee Frank Langella did his first piece of acting at age eight.

What I do know is that children are often wiser than we give them credit for.