A teaching moment

Every year on Flag day our neighborhood has a flag day parade. All of the kids from the neighborhood gather together with their bikes, or scooters and decorate them in red, white, and blue and then parade them through the neighborhood. One of the men in the ward is a fireman and he brings a fire truck and honks the horn, and sprays water, and the kids all love it. Well, my kids were very excited about being able to ride their bikes (with training wheels) in the parade this year. We got to the starting point, decorated their bikes and then followed behind the fire truck as the parade started. The first portion of the route is uphill, so I ended up pushing both of them for most of it and we got pretty far behind most of the other kids. Finally, we got to the top of the hill and onto a flatter portion of the route. The girls took off, seemed to be having fun, and I lagged behind on foot. The route started a downhill portion and my girls were getting farther and farther ahead of me, and then they were supposed to turn into a cul-de-sac to turn around. As they were making the turn...they both biffed it!!! Alyssa was bawling, Holly was sprawled out in the middle of the street, and there I was running to get to them as fast as I could. Holly shook it off pretty good, got back on her bike and caught up with the other kids. Alyssa, however, didn't recover so quickly. Both of her knees were pretty scraped up and she was crying pretty hard. I somehow persuaded her to get back on her bike and held her hand as we tried to catch up with the parade. We finally arrived at the finish and enjoyed a yummy meal.

Later that night as we were sitting on the couch for scripture time, Alyssa looked at me kinda sad and said, "mommy, I was the slowest one tonight." I could tell she felt sad, embarrased and humble...which provided me with a wonderful opportunity to teach her. I told her that it doesn't matter how slow she is, or if she falls off her bike, that it's not important to be first or to win, but what matters most is that she gets back up each time she falls, and keeps trying until she finishes. I told her how proud I was of her that she kept trying and finished. Then I asked her what mattered most and she said, "that I always keep trying." It was a very sweet teaching moment.