This morning my six year old didn’t want to do his zoom kindergarten class. I told him it was OK. He logged on anyway, but thirty minutes into laying in front of the computer, he closed the screen and said he wanted to be finished with school for the morning.

We spent the next ninety minutes lovingly working together. He swept little piles of crumbs and dust around the dining room as I prepared the mop bucket. We took turns wiping the table and spraying it with our vinegar, water, tea tree oil solution, we folded a basket of laundry, and cleaned the front porch. He was so diligent in the activities, giving care to do each job well. As we worked we spoke very little, focusing on our task and relishing in the happy movement of our hands. (Waldorf teachers love to say that busy hands are happy hands). A few times I stopped to watch him. Once he caught me stealing a glance, and he looked up with his enormous blue eyes. Someone once told me the entire universe is in his eyes. I didn’t understand what she meant, maybe something about everything being interconnected. I felt full of warmth when we locked eyes.

Even as I sit here now, writing, he sits next to me with a royal blue composition book on his lap. His legs are crossed at the ankle, just barely hanging off the edge of the couch. He is writing too; he’s taken a ‘Happy Halloween’ pencil and filled a page with letters, in no particular order.

So here we are. He didn’t do what he was supposed to do, but exactly what he needed. Sometimes children know what’s best for them. Or, at the very least, they know what’s best for us.