The Kids of Integrity Challenge is finished!

Respect is growing, mould is not

Squeals of delight rang through the house. “This is like a treasure hunt!” crowed Jessica. “I can’t find any!” cried Benjamin. Both kids raced from room to room, searching behind doors and under furniture. No, we were not having an early Easter egg hunt. The kids were looking for dust to put on a slice of bread for the Respect object lesson “Mouldy Attitudes.” Rob chuckled, “Yeah. Put that in the blog – that the kids can’t find any dust in our house.” Ha! 

I sent Ben downstairs to look under the water tank, then helped Jess crawl under the computer desk. Soon we had more than enough to start our experiment. Sprinkle, spritz and seal. Now, let the mould grow!

That was last week. Five days later, we still just have lint, hair and crumbs clinging to a moist slice of rye. And we even put it right by the bathroom furnace vent for maximum warmth! Is our inability to grow green fuzzies a testament to the preservatives in the bread or did we do something else wrong? We’ll give it more time, but I’m sure my mother-in-law is going to be wondering about me when she comes over tonight and sees a baggie of soggy, dusty bread on the bathroom floor!

Sometime during our mould-waiting days, Rob went through the Bible story of Belshazzar with the kids (Daniel 5). I got a major sleep-in that morning, but Jess did a bang-up job of retelling the tale for me later in the day. She obviously “got it.”

We’ve been forgetting to go over our chosen memory verses: “Show respect for everyone . . .” (1 Peter 2:17) and “Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10). Good thing they’re simple. Perhaps we can play catch-up this week. I printed the versess with pictures of dogs play-bowing. The photos also led to a good discussion on culture, bowing, respect and idolatry. (Didn’t plan that one.)

A few observations have been added to both columns of our “Respect Detectives” poster. On the respectful side, we now have: graciously sharing toys and holding the door open for each other. In the disrespectful column, the new entries were: wasting food and not picking up dog poop.

I’m a bit disappointed that we haven’t gone through more of the great contents in this lesson yet. Better get cracking, because next week is already booked to near insanity. How things get SO busy SO fast is beyond me. We don’t watch TV, we don’t have flyers or newspapers delivered, neither child is in an extracurricular activity at the moment and yet we scramble to find time to teach godly character. In a whole week, you’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to carve out an hour or two.

I am happy to report that my tone with the kids has taken on a somewhat more respectful quality (which was probably aided by the aforementioned sleep-in!). I’m still convinced that these lessons are just as much for parents as they are for the young ones!

Hope to report on putrid bread and more respectful attitudes very soon.

Tags:

• Respect