What Is Not the Boss

My little friend Prudence is 3 years old.  She's in the process of being potty-trained.  So the other night her mom told her to go use the bathroom.  She objected that, "My body isn't telling me I have to."  First, this is a necessary thing to teach children to recognize, when their bodies are telling them to use the toilet - and to get them to act on that and go, on their own initiative.  However, a much more important lesson came in my friend Amie's reply to her daughter, "Who's the boss?  Your body or Mommy?  Your body is not the boss of you."

Your body is not the boss of you.  We should absolutely be teaching children this.  And then, maybe when they're adults, they'll know it, too.

Interestingly enough, it rather aligned with the article by GK Chesterton that Prudence's dad read to us the same night.  In it, the author was responding to a critic who insisted that since his bodily impulses for pleasure were natural, they were legitimate.  The critic was also interested in pursuing these pleasures while preventing natural consequences of the actions.  Yet another valuable lesson.

Consequences are natural (and therefore legitimate?).

To God be all glory.