A good lesson to learn young

My niece and nephew have been hanging out with us this week (well, Sam left us for greener pastures--her friend's house--but she was with us for a few days).

Tuesday night Jonathon, Sam and Jake (Duncan was gone with Anne to get his late-but-much-loved birthday present) played the Lego board game. There was much swiping of blocks, and laughing, and "Hey, what'd you do that for!" coming from the living room. When the game was over Jonathon came into the kitchen and said to me, in a very quiet voice, "I have learned something while Sam has been here. It is very easy to offend teenage girls. Even when you don't mean to."

There is so much truth revealed in that one statement. For one, not only is my son right, but he is not stupid, and he can learn very obvious things. This is good. It's great to be able to learn the less-obvious things, but not being able to learn the really obvious things can be detrimental to your health. I'm glad he picked up on this one.

Second, it implies that there were times when he didn't actually intend to offend his cousin. This gives me hope, and faith that I am in fact raising a gentleman. I am so proud.

The third thing didn't really become clear until I was talking to Matthew about it later, but having Sam with us for those few days was a very valuable experience for Jonathon, one that he probably doesn't even realize he should be grateful for. Although Kaes has done a great job of training her brothers in the proper way to compliment a girl and notice her new clothes and things like that, she will not be a teenager until after Jonathon has gone on his mission and off to college (assuming he follows the life plan we have laid out for him--which he had better). It is extremely important to understand that there is a huge difference between little girls (even when they are going on thirty) and girls with actual hormones running amock. Even if Jonathon forgets this most valuable lesson, he will recall it with increasing clarity as he goes through the next several years of school, especially as the girls get more settled into being teenagers. Though he did learn a truth, he still does not appreciate how big a truth it really is.