Recently, my little guy has noticed that we fold our arms when we pray and since he's in that "mimic" stage of his development he folds his arms too...most of the time. But lately he's even started doing it at the right time, before my husband and I do. We'll sit down to dinner and before we're ready to say the prayer, he knows that it's time to pray so he folds his arms. It's pretty cute if I do say so myself...then again, I am a little biased.
Anyway, we have an evening routine with C-man; Eat dinner, get in bath, put on pajamas, play with toys, watch jeopardy (yes, he's only 16 months, but we can talk about his love for jeopardy in a different post), brush teeth, and go to bed. He knows the routine to the point that when I say, "Lets go brush your teeth", he'll either run because he doesn't want to or he'll go to my bedroom so we can brush. So he knows the routine. He also knows that bedtime comes immediately after teeth brushing. As I was leaving my bathroom to put him to bed he patted my arm like he normally does when he's trying to get my attention. He then immediately folded his arms.
This quiet action took me back. I don't know if he understood what he was doing, but I do know what his actions implied to me. I was reminded of the special responsibility I have as a mother. So I knelt down with my 16 month old son and we said our first nightly prayer together. He may or may not have understood what we were doing. But he taught me that our children are more observant than we sometimes think they are. They're watching, and they're soaking things up...whether they be positive or negative. He reminded me that the teaching needs to be done early and that our sweet, innocent children sometimes have the ability to teach us.
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