What we learn too late

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My grandpa used to keep all of his savings folded up in rubber bands in a sock drawer. He kept cash under his mattress because of the fact that the banks closed down one time before, and he never liked to be reminded of how that smelled. So by the time he died at 88 years old, he had never made any interest on any of his money because of what he had gone through.

He did not have anyone explain these things to him or maybe someone did try, but it did not matter to him because of how afraid he was of what would happen in the future if he did not see it coming.

That is the problem with knowledge that comes too late, it will never come clean, because you will always be left with the memory of how that knowledge came to you. It could be something you have been told you did not do right, or maybe the stench of a particular Tuesday morning when the credit card statement came and you added all of those up and they still did not add up right a hundred times.

Kids are capable of way more than we give them credit for. A kid who is six years old can see that if you spend everything you have now, then you will never have anything again later. A kid who is ten can see that if someone gives you an apology and does not defend it, that that is not the same thing as when someone apologizes to you and does defend it. A teenager can learn that taking time to rest is not the same thing as being lazy, and that taking time to rest before you fall down is a skill and not a character flaw.

The gap between what we try to prevent our children from knowing and what we should actually be giving our children is much bigger than it looks from the outside. Some of the hard lessons do not need to be learned the hard way through falling down, some of them can be passed around the breakfast table with warm eggs and tea, without falling down.