Bye-bye, Vacation Bible School!

Vacation Bible School (VBS) is kind of an odd week for me every year. I’ve been experiencing a bit of a crisis of faith for a while now, and yet I truly want to share this fun, worthwhile program with my kids. Plus, each year there’s a part of me that looks to my little charges for some evidence of the childlike faith that I once had. Maybe I’m just looking for a way to re-connect. Who knows? The point is that, every year, something wonderful and unexpected comes right on up and bites me in the ass. It’s my little VBS Miracle.

This year, it came in the form of a little boy named Brandon. He was in my class last year, and his Mom is one of the other teacher/volunteers. Halfway through the week, she came up to me and told me that Brandon was very upset, because he’d wanted to have me for a teacher again this year.

And I just about fell over. Because I remember Brandon from last year. He’s a dear, sweet boy, but – like most other five year-old boys – he's a fidget factory. So the entire week last year was: “Brandon, honey, pay attention to Pastor Bell. Brandon, sweetie, please give your attention to the music teacher.” And of course: “Brandon, stop hitting Matthew/Maxwell/Danny in church.”

Now, I never called him a name, I never raised my voice and I was always encouraging of his singing and his crafts. But I still figured that this little kid must hate my guts, because I was on his fidgety little butt nonstop for the whole week.

Just goes to show you how wrong you can be about the effects your actions are having on a child. So today I tousled his cowlicked hair, gave him my best VBS smile and told him that – for sure – we’d be together next year.

And then I sat down to try to figure out how this little boy got so smart and I got so dumb. I tried to get back to a time when I was five, and my Mother’s was the loudest voice on the playground. When I knew that, no matter what I was up to in the house, she was listening and seeing and knowing. And how I was absofuckinglutely certain that, no matter what happened to me in my often financially-uncertain childhood, my Mother loved me enough to yell at me when I needed it.

Someone told me that Reese Witherspoon recently said: “If you’re not yelling at your kids, you’re not spending enough time with them.” And there’s something in that. It’s not about tearing your kids down and making them feel badly just for the sake of proving your dominion over them. It’s about setting reasonable limits, watching out after them, and – in the end – showing them that rational, tempered discipline is just another form of love.

And that’s my little VBS lesson for this year.