One day, while shopping in Costco, I discovered that my 4-year old, similar to her mother, likes lists. Having seen me with my own lists -- daily -- she appeared to have picked up a thing or two. So wheeling through the behemoth warehouse, she "wrote" her own list for the items we needed and crossed each one off in its turn. Ever since I noticed that, I encourage her to make lists of stuff, mostly because it keeps her busy and she talks less when she's got a list to keep her occupied. No small feat with that one.
Today we had quite a few errands to run. After the first one, to the local copy shop, she wanted to know what stops we were making and in what order. So we pulled over, found her a pen in my FEMA-level messy car, wrote down all the errand stops, and started on our way again.
Second stop, post office. Once that was done, and we were back in the car, she immediately grabbed her pen: POST OFFICE.
And then she channeled her mother: "Oh Mom! Put COPY SHOP at the top so we can cross it off!"
Is she destined to a life in which she, at 4 pm, writes GET UP at the top of her otherwise hardly accomplished TO DO list just to make that satisfyingly straight horizontal line somewhere? Will she make lists only to lose them? Will she manage her lists or will it be the other way around? Will she someday be tormented by a list of her own making?
Lists. Can't live with 'em, can't stop making 'em, can't find a pen to cross of #13: Stop Making Lists.
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30 March 2009
1. Just Like Her Mother
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2 comments:
I used to have a planner. A Franklin planner, back in the day when they all came with tapes of the Covey Seminars. Back in those days I made lists. I felt either very productive based on what got bumped to tomorrow or like a total slacker. Then I had more children, embraced my inner slacker, gave up list making (because lists look dumb in crayon, NOT very Covey-esque) because at no time is it possible to find an ink pen in my home.
*sigh*
I have turned both of my children into list makers and checker-offers (is too a word). My daughter likes to write them out, while my son likes to count each stop. As a fanatical list maker, I'm proud to have passed it on to them.
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