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"&amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;s Nick?&amp;quot; my husband asked as he dropped by the bleachers at our son&amp;#039;s baseball game on Friday night. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s in that lacrosse goal with the other boys,&amp;quot; I told him, pointing. My 11-year-old had spent the first three innings of his brother&amp;#039;s baseball game playing chase, throwing rocks into the adjacent lake and generally hanging out with the other players&amp;#039; siblings on an unusually warm spring night. Turns out, I had wasted a teachable moment -- and yet, I don&amp;#039;t care. Meanwhile, at another baseball game across the country, one mom pulled out a workbook for her four-year-old. One of my web site&amp;#039;s readers reported that this mom wouldn&amp;#039;t let her preschooler play with the other kids, because she believed that daily homework would give her daughter &amp;quot;an edge&amp;quot; over the other kids. What other kids? Yale&amp;#039;s class of 2026? Apparently. So while all the other kids played, this girl worked...on a Friday night...at a baseball game. And she&amp;#039;s four. As she was boned up on her letters and numbers at her brother&amp;#039;s baseball game, my son was, er, lying in a lacrosse goal, probably making up new lyrics for &amp;quot;Iron Man.&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;I am Ice Cream Man/36 flavors in the back of my van.&amp;quot;) As a result, I wasn&amp;#039;t taking the opportunity of filling the few hours during his brother&amp;#039;s baseball game with work pages to give him an edge over his classmates. Instead, I was talking about good exercises for your butt with the other moms on the bleachers while my son&amp;#039;s brain practically wasted away in the lacrosse goal. And you know what? I&amp;#039;ll do it next Friday night, too. Why? Because teachable moments are overrated. I found that out the hard way. Last baseball season, while that preschooler was doing her homework, I was dying. Only, I didn&amp;#039;t know it. I had a tumor the size of a softball in my lung, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t find that out until June when I wound up on the oncology floor at the hospital, thereby missing the end of my son&amp;#039;s baseball season, the second grade class party and the last day of school. I lay awake in my hospital bed at night, hopped up on steroids, listening to the iPod full of songs my brother had dropped off, and I thought about my kids growing up without me. What was the first thing that came to my mind? &amp;quot;If these are my final days, I&amp;#039;d better make sure my children know their multiplication tables.&amp;quot; No, it wasn&amp;#039;t! I thought that I&amp;#039;d better make sure my kids know how to entertain themselves, how to get along with others and how to deal with grief and loss. I thought about making sure they know how to spend a warm spring Friday night, even if they had years and years of warm spring Friday nights ahead of them. And especially if I didn&amp;#039;t. On a warm spring Friday night in the hospital, I started to rethink teachable moments. And I&amp;#039;ve been rethinking them ever since. Now three months into my remission, I had a shot at a teachable moment on Sunday night. Nick was pushing his bike up the hill near the house as I walked beside him. Here&amp;#039;s my chance, I thought. I turned to my 11-year-old and asked, &amp;quot;So, what are you creating on Sim City?&amp;quot; He told me about the new city he&amp;#039;d made, and how he earns virtual money letting other cities use his city&amp;#039;s landfill. Hmmm, I thought. Economics, city planning, environmental issues. Where to start? But all I said was, &amp;quot;Cool.&amp;quot; And then I listened as he told me about his plans for his city and its trains and the subway he can&amp;#039;t afford and the beach he&amp;#039;d like to add when he gets a chance. When we got to the top of the hill, he got on his bike and rode toward our house. Sometimes, kids just need plain old moments. And so do I. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a2629/teachable-moments-are-overrated/?src=shelter_footer>