Welcome to Sunday Stillness, a few minutes each week to meditate on one idea that will bring us closer to who we want to become.

Something that has often been off-kilter to me as a parent is that kids don't know how to do things just naturally.

There is so much that they don't know.

And there have been shamefully many times in my parenting where I just expected my kids, not like babies,

but like school-age kids and on to just know how to do or how to be and I've had to

remind myself that this is something they need to be taught,

that not everything is common sense or obvious.

And I mean, I'm not talking about like math or reading.

I'm talking about like we don't hit people. It's nice to take your plates to the sink after a meal.

Please close the car door when you exit the vehicle.

Like things to me that just seem like they would be common sense

or be picked up maybe by osmosis, by general human observance of others. Like read the room kid sometimes.

And it's silly like I'm kind of making light of it, but like truly there have been certain frustrations that I have had in raising little children where either I've done my own self-reflection or maybe someone like a co-parent or a therapist has said,

why would you expect them to know that or have you ever taught them that and I have to

remember that I haven't but there is no way that they could possibly know certain things or that things that seem like they would be common sense to someone a little more, you know, with brain development or clearly an adult, is not common sense to people

encountering this dilemma or the situation for the very first time or paying attention to it for the very first time.

And I have to remind myself, sometimes even say out loud, to remind them, how could you know that?

Let me show you how to do that.

Let me tell you about this piece of history or this dynamic that's playing out, because you

won't know unless someone tells you.

And I don't always give myself that same grace.

In fact, there have been many a moment, many a scenario in my life where I really feel deep amounts of shame, or I really beat myself up a lot because of we should have known something. We should have paid attention, we should have been prepared,

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