Thursday, November 4, 2010

Where are you Holly? This is [L]

The doorbell rang again today, I am home for an hour between meetings and was surprised to see our 9 year old neighbor [L]. It's parent teacher conferences in Minneapolis today, which is a fact I missed. A few days ago, [L] and Kohls made themselves squares on our white board. Richard left them each a message this weekend. [L] literally clapped his hands when I told him that he had a message on his square.

He wanted to leave a message for Holly, so he had to erase a message that he had left Holly a few days earlier.
"Now that you've seen the message from Richard, should we erase that one too?" I asked him.

"No, not yet. I like having a message."

It was funny to me when Richard left the messages for Kohls and L. I just thought that it was a silly thing. But to the kids it means something much more. It means that someone in our house cares about them, that they matter, that they have a presence here.

Positive psychologists say that hearing your own name brings happiness for three reasons. We experience pleasure when we hear our own name; we feel engaged when we hear our own name; and we feel that we matter and therefore have a deeper sense of meaning and purpose when we hear our name.

I don't know what the psychologists say about reading our name on a white board at a neighbor's house. But I suspect the findings would be similar. I'm grateful that Holly and Richard were able to show L that he matters today, even if they are at work.

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