November 16, 2009

The Painful, Ugly Truth...and My Son

I had a message from Morgan today saying that she needed to tell me about the conversation she had with Nathan's teacher. You have to understand the fear this struck deep in my soul because - heaven help this boy - he is MY son! But I really thought we'd make it out of preschool before this started. Seriously!

Well, it turns out that what happened was Nathan's teacher began reading a story and talking about Santa Claus. Nathan at some point - burdened that all children be set free from tyranny and that the Lord had appointed him Paul Revere for his class - began telling everyone (excitedly I might add) that "there is no such thing as Santa! Christmas is Jesus's birthday!" This apparently made quite a few other 5 year olds upset. Their worldview had just been shaken to the core! 

[Pretty sure at this point Nathan was taken to a corner by one teacher while the other teacher did what we'll call "diplomatically rectifying the situation"]

This evening I will be looking for that open door to have a conversation with my son about tact and sensitivity and "letting other kids parents be the ones to break the bad news to them" when they deem it the right time. We'll talk about reserving that type of excitement for a time when the school is on fire or someone's about to walk in front of a moving bus. At the same time, there's a part of me that's proud - not that my son is a liberator, but that he is listening. 

One of the reasons we named him Nathan is out of great endearment for the prophet who called the King out in his sin. So I guess if my son's first "episode" in school is that he decided to call out the painful, ugly truth about the fat guy in the red suit.....I can live with that.

No comments: