A Light Bulb Moment

One thing I've learned about parenting is that when your child has a light bulb moment based on something you've been trying to teach him, it is a feeling unlike anything else. Unfortunately one of these amazing moments happened while I was gone, but I'm still proudly sharing it with everyone who will listen.

We've been teaching Grayson to say thank you by both setting an example and prompting him when it's appropriate. Whenever he hands us something we tell him "thank you." When we do something for him, such as pour him a sippy cup of milk for example, as we hand it over we tell him, "say thank you" and he repeats it in the most adorable little boy voice.

Since he's still so young we haven't had a lot of expectation for him to begin saying it unprompted, we were mainly focused on planting the seed of good manners. That was up until Michael and Grayson went to our friend Eva's birthday party on Friday. I don't know all the details but somehow Grayson was interacting with one of the ladies at the party. She handed him something and he immediately told her thank you. No prompting, no repetition, totally on cue and in context.

Not only was Michael a proud papa, but he told me that the woman was so surprised by it she had to quickly recover from her shock and say "your welcome" back to him. While I don't expect him to say it every time without some prompting in the future, it's amazing to see a lesson take hold.