I Voted
I'll be out of town next week, so I went to the courthouse this morning to cast my vote early. I took my 6-year-old son with me this morning so he could get a glimpse of democracy in action.
Along the way we had a conversation about who we would vote for, and he said his candidate was "the brown and white man," Barack Obama. The poll workers welcomed Jack enthusiastically, and even allowed him to cast a ballot. Granted, I filled in the circle of my choice first, but he placed the ballot in the machine. The kid was smart enough to know that he had, in fact, cast my ballot for a candidate not of his choosing. In his anger, he complained about this miscarriage of the democratic system (my words), and said that if that's the way the sytem works (his words), he was never voting again.
I was proud of him for understanding the importance of his vote, and for having the heart to be outraged by what he perceived to be his stolen vote. But I did worry that he was a little young to be disenfranchised.
Because all of this made him a little late for kindergarten, I had to sign him in at the school office when we arrived. Jack very proudly showed the office staff his own "I Voted" sticker, and asked the secretary to make a note on his tardy pass explaining why he was coming in late. Bless her heart, she not only wrote it down, she called ahead to his teacher to let her know Jack had something very important to share with the class.
A minute later I was stooping down to kiss him good-bye, but he said he didn't have time for a kiss because he had a speech to give.
It's not every day that I attempt to instill a value by modeling it and see success so immediately. Some days, I feel like a really good mom.