Today I learned: It's OK to tell your kids to fight for themselves.

My son didn't want to go to kindergarten today. Why, I asked. He replied, that there was a boy, who hits him.
I looked him deep in the eyes and said to him: "If that boy hits you again, go tell the teacher. After that, if he hits you again, hit him back as hard as you can."

Then he was willing to put on his clothes and go to the kindergarten. I gave him a tool how to handle his situation.

As I wrote yesterday, we had a series of talks about relationships. The referee, a pastor, told a story about being harassed in a shower and being told, that he may not defense himself, because he is an pastor and that he must turn the other cheek. He replied, that Jesus said that to people, who were really far in their spiritual life. And that he is not sure, whether he is that far in his spiritual life. But that he is sure, that it will be not his blood, that will run the shower drain.

I believe, that having told my son to turn the other cheek would have caused big harm.
On one hand, the self-value, something I believe God himself has put in everybody, so also in my son, would have been damaged. This would be very sad.
On the other hand, the other boy, God knows which hurts his little soul has experienced, that he treats others this awful way, would not learn, that it's not good to beat other kids. And that would be very sad as well.

Today I learned: You can have joy with kids even when you're sick.

We had a series of talks at our church. It was about relationships. It was about the fundamentals of relationships, about the relationship between a man and a woman and between children and parents.

Todays talk was about enjoying family life.

Many people talk negatively about their family. I am guilty of this one, too. On friday, I said to a schoolfellow, whom I haven't seen in years, (Larissa and I were without kids that day) that doing the shopping without kids is great. What an idiot I was. It's not great. Maybe it's faster. Maybe it's a less nerve-racking experience some of the time. But it's not great.

Family life is great. Or I should say: Can be great.
Today, being still a little bit sick, I would have preferred to lay in bed the whole day.
I did sleep a little bit today, but not much. Quite a lot of the time I spend reading two stories from "Lustige Taschenbüber". And although I was sleepy, I loved cuddling with my kids while reading silly stories about Donald Duck trying to steal an old locomotive for Scrooge McDuck because of some super-secret-and-super-advanced-metal in that old locomotive.

Then I started to fight with my kids. Or better, to wrestle with them. I hold them and they had to figure out how to get free by themselves. I wanted to show them, that they can do something by themselves to change things. We played bulls, pushing each others head with one owns head as strong as possible. We played tortoises. One is an old tortoise (lying facedown on ones knees) and the other tortoises have to turn that old tortoise around without using hands.

They loved it.
And I did, too.

Besides learning "cool" new stuff about programming, about server, clients, frontend, frameworks, and much much much much more, I have to become an expert about my family. And the latter one is much more important. And make more fun, in general. :)