Children can be very persistent. They get an idea into their heads and then pursue it to the point of aggravation sometimes. We as parents are busy and it is often tempting to brush them off for awhile. Watch out though, that can be a dangerous habit in more ways than one. I would like to share a personal story that will illustrate my point.   

Two years ago, the fire department spoke at my son’s school for fire prevention safety week. They spoke about many fire safety rules and stressed the importance of changing the smoke detector batteries in your home. My son John took to heart the fireman’s words. He came home and started in on his dad about checking the batteries of our smoke detectors. My husband told John that he would check them but he put it off for "later". My tenacious son kept after my husband for two weeks straight. Finally, he checked the smoke detectors and was shocked to discover that the batteries in every single detector in our house was dead. He took John to the store and bought new smoke detectors with backup systems for the entire house.

Two weeks later on Thanksgiving morning, we woke up at 4:00 am to the sound of smoke detectors going off. We had a fire in our family room which was at the other end of the house from the bedrooms.

We frantically started looking for the source and realized it had come from a trash can outside on the front porch. It had actually melted and the melted plastic had leaked under the siding and caught the wall on fire. DH said to call the fire department while he got out the hose and started trying to put the fire out himself. In the meantime, I got the kids out and put them in the truck while calling the fire department.

DH worked with the hose while the kids and I sat in the truck with the heat on (it was 20 degrees out!). He was able to put out some of the fire  with the hose but was glad when the fire department arrived. After the fire was out, DH told the firemen how lucky we were that our son listened to them at school and insisted on checking our smoke detectors.

The next day, the fire chief from our town came to our house. He wanted more information about how John had saved us. We gladly told him the story and were so very grateful and proud of our son.

John received several awards for this. The first was an award ceremony with  former County Executive Doug Duncan of Montgomery County. There was also an award ceremony at a fire hall in Rockville with the fire chief of Damascus and the fire chief of Montgomery County. And last but certainly not least……. he received an award at the Governor’s Mansion in Annapolis from Governor Ehrlich.

Our children can be a wealth of information. They can bring laughter and they can bring tears. They can be the cause of our frustrations and the cause of our greatest joys. We gave them life and sometimes, they give life right back to us. Listen to your children…… even when you don’t think you have time. It just might save your life.