A lovely compliment

On Monday night, Rachel played in the park across the street from the school with her friend Devin. Devin's mom Linda, an architect, was doing a presentation in DC (too little time to meet up with Drew, alas) and so Jim, Devin's father, and I supervised the girls as they were playing with Devin's Barbies.

After they dropped the Barbies and decided to play hide-and-go-seek, Jim turned to me and said, "Devin said something really nice about Rachel the other day. She said, 'Rachel is very intelligent and talented.'"

I was so overwhelmed and thanked him profusely and he added that Devin had said that Rachel, during a discussion about Barbies, said that Barbies aren't real, they aren't the real world, and she shouldn't confuse the real world with the fake world. That's something I had told Rachel when I was explaining how computers and learning games work. It was my way of telling her not to get immersed in something that wasn't real, because the real world is much more important.

Jim was impressed that Rachel had shared that concept with Devin and that Devin had repeated it, and he told Devin that was because "Rachel's parents work with her." I didn't have the heart to tell him that my parenting is really minimal right now, except that I seem to excel at the skill of being pedantic when it comes to technology.