Friday, March 04, 2011

Dr. Seuss Day

As many of you know, March 2nd is officially Dr. Seuss Day. Our school decided to celebrate a little bit later. Today the kids had the option to dress up like a Seuss character.

I will be the first to admit that I was so happy when they confided in me that they didn't want to dress up.

"It's not worth it. It's too much work", they said.

I was happy counting my fortune and then changed gears and wondered if it wasn't too late to convince them to participate. I started to worry if I was teaching my kids to be lackadaisical. All sorts of things started flying through my mind: chore charts, money lessons, bribing techniques, desperate measures, and many other memories associated with teaching the kids to work.

I quickly snapped out of it. Should it really be a life crisis that my kids don't want to do an optional dress up for school? It's not like they've never dressed up before.

I quickly googled the master himself to see if any of his writings would back me up:

"Be who you are and say what you feel,
 because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind."

I don't care if the kids dress up and I am pretty sure that the people at school who may think it matters, really won't mind if my kids don't participate.

And just that fast I felt free.
It didn't require going here or there.
Or eating green eggs or ham.
Or counting fish.
Or dressing up a cat in a hat.

It just required this mom to let go of her own issues to give her kids some space to underachieve.

If you want to read something funnier about Dr. Seuss that is slightly inappropriate for children (wink wink) go here. You will laugh.

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