When I was in college, one of my assignments was to practice patient teaching. We were to teach someone whithout a medical background some aspect of self care. We developed the lesson plan, did the research, taught the person, and asked them to evaluate how well we did. I practiced my teaching on my Mom.

It was a wonderful experience! I enjoyed preparing and teaching her something that I sincerely felt she would benefit from, and she was attentive and appreciative of my efforts. It made me feel really good.

But it's only now, when my son has been teaching me how to use Powerpoint that I understand how she felt that day. What a wonderful blend of feelings - getting lost in really listening and learning from him, yet smiling from ear to ear the whole time! I could remember so clearly those milestones that mean so much - his first words, the day that it hit me that he was speaking in complete sentences, the first book that he read to me - all the things that make a mommy cry with happiness.

All the feelings that run through us as parents - our hopes, our terror that something will go wrong, our love, our feelings of happiness for our children's successes and triumphs, our devastation when they are hurt. Yet, in spite of our feelings, our children must go through all of their life lessons. My son will, I'm sure, surpass all of my achievements and even my hopes for him, since he will carve out his own life - that is already better than anything I could dream.

He's already taught me so much - I'll let him believe for now that it's only about learning a computer program - when he has children of his own, he'll understand what he's really teaching me.