Last week, we had a fantastic time with family, enjoying the sun and swimming, and hours of volleyball. The children were all in the pool one day, when Chris’s brother noticed that they were playing with some oars of the small inflatable boat. He asked them to take the oars out of the pool, in case they ripped the lining of the pool.
A minute or so later, Chris looked up to see that our youngest son, Jacob, still had an oar in the pool.
“Jake!” he called out. “Didn’t you hear Uncle Jonny tell you to take the oars out of the pool?”
Jacob looked at us with a puzzled expression, then glanced down at the oar in his hand.
“Daddy,” he called back, “what’s an oar again?”
We had a good laugh about that It was a great example to me of how we need to make sure our children have clearly understood what we’ve told them or asked them to do. I wonder how often we’ve labelled them disobedient, when in fact they just haven’t understood what it is we’ve asked of them.