One of the Symptoms of Having it All

I have one child in my care that appears to 'have it all'. He is very indulged. His parents can afford this, it is a conscious decision that they have made. And this is their life.

When a person has an abundance of belongings, things start to lose their value.

One small example of this, is this child's lack of interest in taking care of some of the basics. Granted, we are in a season where you could need 3 different jackets to get you through the day. The jacket you needed in the morning is not a necessity by recess and by the time school is finished, you could be in shorts. So shedding these extra layers and not really needing to find them at the end of the day to be warm enough to go home, is natural.

What I did find interesting was his complete disinterest in caring about or looking for these lost articles of clothing at school. This week, I had the luxury of having no other children here. So I went to the school with him to look through the lost and found and his classroom to try to find a few of these missing items of clothing. In his locker right in the classroom, there was a jacket on the bottom. The teacher picked it up and asked if it was his. His immediate and end all answer was ''No.'' It was exactly as his mom described to me and she had written his initials on the tag. So I checked. And it was definitely his.

But he had no interest in claiming it. 'Things' are easily replaced. He had it for such a short period of time, he didn't recognize it. Each day as his jackets went missing, they were replaced. A jacket is really of no personal value to a child in a lot of cases. But I thought it was rather sad to have such a small sense of caring when it came to something that belonged to him.

When things come easily, have little personal value to a person and there are no repercussions to losing them ... it devalues them. I am not a strong believer of placing a high amount of value on material belongings. But I do believe in placing enough value on what you do have, to respect that someone took the time and money to buy it in the first place.

Not everything is easily replaced. I think that learning to value some of life's smaller things helps to teach a small lesson in the whole scheme of things.