Seymour: “Okay, Cricket, time to get ready for bed.”

Cricket: *instant tears*

Seymour: “What’s the matter, buddy?”

Cricket: “Now I don’t get to do chores!”

My sweet little Cricket came home from CCD the other night with a collection box. Apparently they’re collecting money to buy rice for those less fortunate, and he is so excited to help. He told Seymour on the way home from church that he needed fifteen dollars, expecting Seymour to just hand it over, from the sounds of it. Seymour told him he could earn some money by doing chores, so he came home all excited to help Bubbles do the dishes.

And then the world ended when he didn’t get to stay up past bedtime to help.

This isn’t the first time Cricket’s been so gung-ho about helping others in need. When a local family lost literally everything but the clothes on their backs the day after Christmas, he was all set to donate half the things in his room (whether they were his to donate or not). And when I told him that they probably didn’t need his old copies of Ranger Rick as much as they needed clothes to wear and that his were either too small or too big to give them, he decided that his classroom  at school might want them.

The older I get, the less sure I am that I have this whole parenting thing down. But for my six-year-old to have a heart this big, I must be doing something right.

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