I Am Learning In Front Of My Kids

They are watching you, and that is the whole problem.

If the house were empty you would have that cabinet door off in ten minutes, and it would go badly for a while, and nobody would ever know. But there is a nine year old at the table doing homework and a six year old on the floor, and both of them look up every time something goes wrong.

And the sentence in your head is not about the door at all. It is: they need me to be the one who knows.

So you leave it. You say you will do it later, and later arrives and they are still there, and the door has been like that since February.

Let me put the thing down that this whole article stands on. Not knowing how to do a household job is not a character flaw, and it is not a crack in a mother, and there is no version of being a good parent that requires you to already know how a hinge comes off.

Strength made perfect in weakness

There is a line in Second Corinthians that gets quoted so often it has almost stopped meaning anything, so let me put it back on its feet.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9, King James Version)

Paul had asked three times for something to be taken away, and it was not taken away, and this was the answer. Not: be stronger. Not: hide it better. The answer was that the place where he was weak was the place where God's strength was going to show up.

Made perfect there means completed, brought to its full expression. God's strength arrives at its clearest exactly where a person is not covering.

You have been shown a place where God's strength completes itself, and being visibly unable to do something has never once been the place where He withdraws. Second Corinthians 12:9 puts the perfecting precisely at the point of weakness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a mother hear that without hearing an instruction to perform.

And notice what Paul does after that sentence. He does not go quiet about it. He writes it down, in a letter, to a whole church, on purpose, forever.

You are allowed to say the hard part out loud in front of people who love you, and letting a weakness be visible has never once been the same as failing them. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the shame out of being seen mid attempt, and it is written in Second Corinthians that the not covering is the whole point of the passage.

What your children are actually learning

Here is what I want you to think about, because it is the part nobody says.

Your children are not learning household skills from watching you. They are learning something far larger, which is what a competent adult does when they meet something they cannot do.

Right now, what they are learning is: you avoid it, you say you will do it later, and eventually somebody else comes. That is a complete lesson and it is being taught extremely well.

You have been teaching them a whole method without meaning to, and a door left since February has never once been the only thing being handed on in that kitchen. It is written in Second Corinthians 12:9 that strength comes to completion in a visible weakness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can change what a household learns on an ordinary Tuesday.

Now imagine the other lesson. They watch you get it wrong. They watch you say I do not know how this comes apart. They watch you look it up, try it, fail, say a word about it, try again, and get it. Then they have seen a whole adult run the entire process of learning something from nothing.

That is worth more to a nine year old than a fixed cabinet door by a factor of about a thousand.

Now the limit, and I say it in the room rather than in a footer. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly. And say that out loud in front of your children too, because knowing what not to attempt is one of the most valuable things a child can watch an adult do.

You are teaching them something excellent when you refuse a job and pick up a phone, and naming a limit in front of a child has never once been a smaller lesson than doing the job. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person calm about a boundary, and Scripture puts God's strength at the place where a person is honest about what they cannot do.

Say the hard parts out loud

So here is the ask, and the children stay in the room on purpose.

Do one job with them there, and say the hard parts out loud as they happen.

I do not know how this comes off. I am going to look it up. That did not work. I am going to try it the other way. I have got it wrong. Look at that, it moved.

You are able to narrate your own learning in front of a nine year old, and one afternoon of saying the hard parts has never once cost a mother an ounce of what her children think of her. The Spirit of God is the one who turns a dreaded moment into an ordinary one, and Second Corinthians 12:9 has a man writing his own weakness into a public letter without losing anything at all.

Here is what will actually happen, and it is worth knowing in advance so the imagined version stops running.

They will be interested. They will come over. They will offer opinions, most of them wrong. The six year old will want to hold something. And at no point will either of them think less of you, because children do not run that calculation. Adults run it. Children just want to be near the thing that is happening.

And if it goes badly and you have to stop, say that out loud too. We are going to leave this and come back to it. That is not a failed lesson. That is possibly the best sentence in the entire afternoon.

You have permission to be seen mid attempt by the people who love you most, and a job left unfinished in front of a child has never once been the same as letting them down. It is written in Second Corinthians that God's strength comes to its fullest where a person stops covering, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the kitchen with you.