Simple as "Simon Says"

Sunday I had the opportunity to spend time with my grandchildren, Taylor (5) and Mason (1). It is always a good day when I get to do this because things get really simple when I interact at their level. I love to digress to my own childhood and remember how much fun I had before I went off to kindergarten. From my perspective, kindergarten is a time when you release your children for the first time to the care and wisdom of other adults as well as expose them to the diversity of many other lifestyles of children in a daily way (that's a subject for a different day though).

Taylor's creative mind moved us to a hybrid game of "Simon Says" that she called "Teacher". Obviously the competitive blood as the first born in a competitive family made her the "Teacher". The game worked like this, as the Teacher she could tell us what to do or not to do and we would do exactly what she told us or we would be "out". As you can imagine, us grandparents don't respond quite as precisely or as quickly as our Teacher expected. It produced more laughter and fun than I have had in quite awhile. She was a great teacher at age 5. She kept the instructions short and simple. It made the game fast paced and fun. At times, the instructions required teamwork or two to accomplish. She kept everyone engaged and the time flew as her success was reaffirmed by a proud grandma.

I will not forget the simpleness of that time we had together this Sunday. It made me wonder if we adults have made life more complicated than it needs to be sometimes-- turning games to contests, innocent fun to a challenge, or teamwork into competition. It made me wonder if we really just took our ULTIMATE TEACHER literally how simple and fun life could really get for all people. I am thankful for my granddaughter who's simple fun loving joy has me thinking how I can apply what I learned on Sunday to where I am in life.