So one of the hardest things for people to learn, especially children, and one of the lessons I try to teach my children is learning to defer joy. What I mean by that is being patient when you get something fun, a new game, or toy or movie etc. and knowing that it is not going away, you don't have to play it until boredom the first instant you get it.
One of the prime examples if we have a pool table, we bought it several year ago, we don't play a lot anymore. From time to time I look at it and think: gee, what a waste, we never play that. But I have learned that just because you have a thing doesn't mean you have to use it all the time. When we got the PC a week ago I wanted to site down and play it, but I have realized that it's not going to fail from lack of use, and it's okay to not play games on it every night.
This is one of those adult concepts that is absolutely foreign to small kids. James will play with a new toy to the exclusion of all other things until he gets bored with it. And that's frustrating after Christmas or a birthday because he has just received all this stuff, and he will ignore a lot of it. But the thing that I have to remind myself is that some of the things he received are not as exciting, but he will use them at some point. For his last birthday he received a rock polisher, we have polished just one batch of rocks so far. But I know that he will want to do more of it at some time, we just have to be patient.
So to sum up, one of the things we learn as we grow older is that stuff, tangible items like toys, does not disappear if we don't use it. And we don't have to use something all the time to enjoy having it. And this is something else I want to work on teaching my kids.
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