A dose of humility

One of the kids' after school program teachers pulled me over the other day and said, "A was sharing some information about your situation today." I raised my eyebrows and she nodded knowingly. "I told him maybe that was mom's private information." I smiled and thanked her.

There's a fine line between being honest and being private. As I wrote here earlier, the kids know what happened. They don't know the gory details, but they know the results. It seemed important to be honest with them. But I didn't say, "Don't tell anyone." I'm still not sure that I should. I'm wondering about things like shame, humility, honesty and the concept of reputation. Should I have told them not to tell anyone so that the parents in the neighborhood don't think ill of me? Like I care. But should I have found a delicate way to suggest this information is private so that parents in the neighborhood won't think ill of them? Maybe. Would they confuse that to think that lying was okay sometimes? I don't know. I guess ultimately, I didn't want to put the stress of thinking they needed to keep a secret for me on them. Seemed like a bad precedent to set.

The concept of discretion doesn't completely escape them, however.

Before we rode down to the pool one day, I called for W, who had gone to visit with our four-year old neighbor in his front yard.

"Come on W, we're going to the pool now." I can't remember if I've mentioned it before but this boy, my oldest son, is LOUD. He proceeded to bid his little friend adieu as follows,

"OKAY, WE'RE GONNA GO NOW. WE'RE RIDING OUR BIKES DOWN TO THE POOL... BECAUSE RIDING YOUR BIKE IS GOOD FOR YOU...AND BECAUSE MY MOM CAN'T DRIVE A CAR BECAUSE . . . " At this point, I got pretty uncomfortable, so I interjected,

"Um, W?" He got the message immediately,

"WELL, I CAN'T TELL YOU WHY, CAUSE IT'S PRIVATE, AND YOU CAN'T GUESS, AND I CAN'T TELL YOU, BUT IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS," And holding his hand up to his mouth, mimicking drinking from a bottle,
"GLUG, GLUG, GLUG!"

Oh, the shame. As we rode our bikes past the neighbor's house I saw that not only had W announced my mistake to his little friend, but also to his grandfather, who was sitting out front watching his grandson. I smiled weakly, waved and pedaled on.