Lessons From My Hubby

Have you ever screwed up? Who hasn't?

And how you do feel when someone rubs your nose in it? Lectures you about it? Gives you a guilt trip over it? Does it help? Heck no!

So why do we ever do that to our children? I'm guilty of it.

Let me tell you how my husband handled our oldest son last night.

But first some background:

Hubby's company buys tickets to awesome games like the Capital 1 Bowl and Champs Bowl and season tickets to Magic games. They offer the tickets to clients as a little PR. We also get tickets for the games.

Last month, he got 6 tickets for us to go to the Champs Bowl. We invited 2 friends and took our 2 oldest boys (Little R and Handsome).

All was great until the fireworks after the National Anthem. Little R hates live fireworks. Too loud he says. So Hubby and I spent probably half the game with him either in the bathroom (much quieter) or walking around outside the bleachers because he was too upset and scared to go back in.

Last night, Hubby had 2 tickets for the Magic game. He usually takes one of four older kids. (This is his third season doing this and they go in the same order all the time.) This was Little R's turn. Hubby warned him ahead of time about the possibility of fireworks which he has seen at previous Magic games. Little R promised he'd be fine.

They left at 6:15pm and were headed home by 7:15pm. Yep! $120 worth of tickets down the drain.

When my sweet husband came in the door, I asked him if he yelled. Nope. Did he lecture? No.

He felt terrible wasting those tickets and was not pleased in the least. But instead of rubbing his son's nose in it, you wanna know what he did? He put aside his emotions to build their relationship. They did some male bonding over a game of computer football.

Think about the impact that is going to have on this child. It brings me to tears. Our son will be able to look back and say, "I may have really disappointed my dad, but he loved on me regardless!"

What a lesson he taught me.