Lost and Found

As you are no doubt aware, parents are responsible for teaching their children a LOT of things.  Everything from mobility-- rolling over, crawling, walking-- to hygiene (potty training is looming large for Ryder right now, but it's amazing how often I still need to review the basics of wiping and hand-washing with the older kids) to academics (shapes, colors, counting, ABCs, etc, etc) to ethics & religion...  Really, the list is never-ending.  And no, you never get to just be done with it.  I know this because I still call my Mom up all the time to ask her advice on stuff.  So I know I'm in it for the long haul with my own kids!

But recently, I have a new thing that I have decided my kids need to learn and which I am desperately trying to get them to understand.  And it seems to basic and silly, and yet, the more I think about it, the more important it is becoming in my mind.  I am trying to teach them how to find things.

I actually don't mean that in some deep, metaphysical way.  I mean, quite literally, that I want them to learn how to look for something until they find it.

Because right now, this is what happens in my house ALL THE TIME:


Child: Mom, where is    (some thing)      ?

Me: I think it's in your room.  Go look there.

Child (returning to wherever I am): I looked.  I didn't see it.

Me: Well, did you look on your bed?  I think it might be on your bed.

Child (once again returning): No, it's not there.

Me: Let's go look together.  See?  It is right there.  Right there on your bed, in your room, like I told you it was.

Child: Ohhhhh, I didn't see it there!


Just now, I told Ryder to look for the remote control while I put clothes in the dryer.  I told him to look on the couch.  He couldn't find it.  He sat there on the couch chattering away about how he could not find that remote control.  And there it was, on the couch (under a pillow, but still right there!).  I once realized that Bentley was-- literally!-- standing on top of the homework he couldn't find!  And this all really drives me crazy because it is clear to me that they aren't looking at all!!!  And this is unacceptable.

So I'm trying to explain to them that they need to actually look.  With those pretty little blue eyeballs.  Looking is key.

And the next step is even more important: if it's not there, think of somewhere else it might be and go look there, too!  Because they are equally incapable of this next step, and it turns out that something is very rarely in the first place you look!  But it is ALWAYS in the last place you look!  So the key is to keep trying, and it will usually turn up.  But not trying to find something almost always means that it stays lost forever.  (Except for the other sock.  If you finally give up and throw the found one away, the lost one WILL magically turn up.  Every.  Single.  Time.)


This has blossomed in my mind into a terribly important skill.  A skill that will help or hinder them all their lives, depending on their ability to master it.  A skill that will probably be more significant than knowing their numbers and ABCs.  Because if they can figure out how to eventually find things-- whether it's actual objects, or the answers to questions, or a job or true love or whatever else we are all trying to find in life-- if they can actually find the things they're looking for, how can they not have the most successful, marvelous lives?

The key is to just keep looking.  Keep looking everywhere you can think of until you finally find it.