Ryan has known his ABC’s for a while now. After going to Emily’s preschool class one day, 8 years ago, I realized not only was it necessary for me to teach him his ABC’s early on, but also how important hand washing would be in our lives.
You see, the teacher gave the kids something to rub into their hands which would show up under a black light. They thought it was neat to see their fancy hands, lit up purple-ish white, stuff stuck in the crevices of their pudgy little fingers. Then the teacher gave them each a squirt of soap and taught them to add a little water, shut off the spigot, and then rub their hands together whilst singing their ABC’s. Once the song was over they rinsed their hands thoroughly, dried them, and held them under the black light in order to see if the glowing substance was still there or not. The goal, clearly, no more glow-in-the-dark hands represented no more germs.
And, baby, did their sweet little hands still light up! At this time Noah was in the hospital where I was washing my hands seventy-eight million times in one day. So, seeing that their little hands were still nasty, as most of them didn’t know their ABC’s at the time and weren’t singing the whole song, therefore were not completely cleaning their hands, I knew life with a boy would be a whole other ball of wax, and the kid needed to know a few things, two of which were his ABC’s and how to wash his dirty little paws.
First we simply taught him the ABC song and would sing it every time we washed hands. Every time. Then we reinforced it with books like Dr. Seuss’ ABC book, zoo animal puzzles, and other visual things. Now we are adding on what he knows, like which words begin with the letter “E” and building his vocabulary.
But before the importance of Ryan knowing how to clean up after himself and conjugate verbs, more than anything, I want him to know, though I can’t force him to believe, that he is loved unconditionally, and this love is free, is the love with which he was created, and it comes from God who thinks Ryan is pretty special.
So building on what he already knows about God’s love and letters, here are the ABC’s we are working on as we drive around or have lunch or snuggle up for books at nap time.
At some point in his life he’ll face hard things and the world will tell him God isn’t good, He’s a big, bad meany in the sky who doesn’t care about him, or He doesn’t exist at all. Hopefully he’ll be able to draw on something he learned, even before Kindergarten, that something being:
God is love and is in love with us. And He is good.
A – Awesome
B – Beautiful
C – Creator
D – Divine
E – Everlasting
F – Father
G – Good
H – Holy
I – Indescribable
J – Joy
K – Kind
L – Loving
M – Maker
N – Never leaves us
O – Omnipotent
P – Pure
Q – Quick to forgive
R – Royal
S – the Surest thing there is
T – True
U – Undeniable
V – Valiant,
W – Wonderful, Wise
X – eXcellent
Y – “You are I Am.”
Z – He puts a Zip in our step 😉 or gives us Zeal and Zest for life
We add to these and expand on them, but just wanted to share a simple way to pour some love and truth into your hearts today.
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