6 Min Read
Published on: 2 days ago
This morning after I got home from taking my older daughter’s two children to their preschool, I burst into tears. A week or two ago I had told them they needed to be in the car and buckled up by 8:30 in order to get their reward for being on time—a stick of sugarless gum. I never expected they would be late today.
Their parents had gotten them both dressed before they left for work, and they ate breakfast much earlier than usual. All they had to do was brush their teeth and go to the car. But they must have my genes. They frittered away the minutes playing, or dawdling at the few necessary things they had to do. I tried to give them increasingly frequent and urgent updates on how much time they had left before they would lose their gum.