No Tripping Your Team Mates

So Little Man had his first basketball class yesterday.  He is a HUGE basketball fan and has been dying to play since he's been 2 years old after we went to his first NBA game where he sat still glued to the action the entire time.  On the way to class, he asked me 1001 questions because he was so excited.  One of the questions was "What are we going to learn?"  I explained that the coach will teach him the basics of playing like passing, dribbling, and shooting.  He then added in his own commentary: "And we'll learn not to fight with our team mates and not to trip them, even if it is funny."  "Yep!", I replied.  Huh?  Wait a minute, tripping your team mates isn't funny.  "Sure it is!", he said. 

The little everything day things about parenting still amaze me.  That we need to teach little humans how to put on their socks, tie their shoes and do all the basic things it seems like we've known all our lives is pretty cool.  Teaching them qualities like humanity, morality, generosity, and kindness along with all the attributes we need to become great people is a big responsibility.  The fact that basic human nature tells us as unrefined humans that things like tripping others is funny, even though civilized people know it is not is very interesting to me.

The best way to teach our children morals is to lead by example, they need to see us doing the things every day that we say are right.  Last night we were watching our town's Christmas parade and there was a man dressed up as an elf riding a bike pulling a wagon (I have mentioned we live in the country, right LOL?) Well, the man fell over and hit the ground pretty hard.  My husband ran over there without skipping a beat and helped him up.  I was surprised at how many other parade-goers didn't even blink an eye.  Matthew kept talking about how his Dad helped the elf the rest of the night.

The other thing we need to do is take every opportunity to talk to our children.  Had my son and I never been talking about basketball, I might not have known he thought tripping other kids was funny.  As a result I would have missed an opportunity to strengthen his morals.  Ask your child questions and more importantly, ask them what they think.  You might be surprised (like I was) at their answers.