Get tough

This morning I ws discussing with Jamon how we were going to teach virtues to Corban. This conversation came about due to an experience I had at the grocery store last week. I was talking to a friend of mine near the deli counter in Publix. She had two of her sons with her, they are like 3 and 5 or something close to that. While we were talking the younger one started fidgeting (He wanted the free cookie!) and she kindly turned to him and said "What virtue should you be practicing now?" He responded "Patience" and then promptly settled down and was an absolute angel. I walked away thinking "WHAT... he's three years old and he knows what virtues are... and that he needs to practice patience. Corban doesn't have a chance. I don't even know what all of the virtues are!" So that's how Jamon and I got to talking about it. How are we going to teach our precious lil boy to be virtuous. Jamons solution was quite simple. He said we only needed to teach him one. The "King of all virtues" as Jamon called it. It is:

GET TOUGH.

Yes. Get tough.

Corban, I know you want a cookie but you can't have one right now. GET TOUGH

I know you don't want to say the rosary right now. GET TOUGH

I know you're frustrated because you want to play with that toy right now, but it's someone else's turn. GET TOUGH.

Basically, according to Jamon, Get tough encompasses all virtues and will teach corban to choose to do what he may not want to do.... to choose a virtue.

My thought was to tell him to just "Offer it up." That's what I grew up with and it seemed to work okay.

Thank goodness Corban is only 2 months old and we have some time to fine tune the life lessons we'll teach.