Stepping Up

Nigel Latta says the best way to teach boys values is to model them yourself.

So I was in slight despair when Master Nine told me about an incident he witnessed in the playground where a kid was bullied and someone ran to the teacher to intervene.

“And what did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing. It wasn’t me or my friends who bullied him,” he answered, seemingly proud that he wasn’t to blame.

“But did you do anything to try and stop it?”

“No, I don’t tell tales.”

Your actions tell him more than a thousand lectures ever could, I recalled reading in the Values Maketh The Man chapter of Nigel Latta’s recently-read Mothers Raising Sons book.

Clearly either I hadn’t been carrying out enough good deeds, or Master Nine hadn’t been paying attention when I did. I decided to give a lecture anyway. I’ll spare you the dialogue – something along the lines of, rather than being a mere by-stander, how proud I would be if he stepped up to help people in need and those actions, in some incidences, could be deemed heroic.

As I ab-libbed, I began building an image in my head of my heroic son as a result of witnessing his mother carrying out heroic actions for others. When I started seeing capes, I realised I’d gone too far and reined myself in. He wasn’t listening anyway and had moved onto showing his siblings how many ‘orange bits’ (dried fruit) he’d got in his cereal that morning.

Later that day we walked up to the local supermarket. Master Nine had scootered so he waited outside the doors while the twins and I grabbed a few items. On the walk home he mentioned that he’d gone through the ‘in’ doors and, on the way back out them, got stuck.

“Why did you need to go in?” I enquired.

“Because an old man dropped his wallet on his way into the supermarket so I went in and gave it to him.”

Ping. I felt a pang of – what was that – pride? My son had stepped up instead of choosing to be a mere by-stander!

“That’s what I was talking about. You stepped up and leant a helping hand and now something good will probably happen to you,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Oh you will see. It’s just rather magical that way – it’s called karma.”

“Well something good didn’t happen to me because when I was coming back out of the supermarket, the poles only moved one way and then someone came in and they pinged me. And then I couldn’t get back out the door until someone came in and the doors opened.”

“But did it make you feel good when you gave the man back his wallet?”

“Yes.”

Back home at dinner time he announced that still nothing good had happened to him.

I had made a very lazy dinner that night due to being unwell – baked spaghetti baskets with melted cheese and only a few of them had the small sausages from the can.

While the twins only found one in their dinner, Master Nine happened to find five sausages, which was completely unplanned on my part.

“Hey, you were right,” he declared. “Something good has happened to me!”

Thanks to karma and some little sausages, I think we have a super-hero in the making.