I Do Not Know What To Be Specific About

Everybody says be specific.

Do not say you are clever, they say. Say something exact. Name the actual thing.

And you sat with that for a minute and then discovered something quite uncomfortable, which is that nothing came. Not one exact thing about how your daughter's mind works. You could tell me she is kind and that she is funny and that she loves her brother, and you could not tell me one thing about how she thinks.

And that is not a failure of love. It is a shortage of material, and material comes from one place only.

You have not watched her. Not in that way, and not for a long time.

And it is not that you have not been paying attention. You have been at that table most evenings for years. You would notice immediately if something were wrong. But noticing that something is wrong and being able to describe how a mind works are two completely different kinds of looking, and only one of them has been happening.

Sought out of all them that have pleasure therein

There is a line in Psalm 111 that says something unusual about how good things get known.

The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. (Psalm 111:2, King James Version)

Sought out. That is an active phrase. It means looked into, examined, gone after deliberately.

And the ones doing the seeking are described by their attitude rather than their qualification. Them that have pleasure therein. The people who enjoy the thing are the ones who go and look at it properly.

So the verse describes a sequence: something is great, and the greatness is found by somebody who goes looking because they like it.

You have been handed a method rather than a talent, and no great thing has ever once been known about by somebody who did not go and look. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that apply to a nine year old at a kitchen table, and Psalm 111:2 makes the seeking out the way the works get known.

And notice it does not say the works announce themselves. They are great whether anybody looks or not, and they are known only by the ones who did.

You were never going to be given the specifics, and nothing worth knowing has ever once arrived without somebody going after it. The Spirit of God is the one who turns an ordinary evening into a place where looking happens, and the written word puts the finding on the seeker.

Why you have no material

Let me describe how the material ran out, because it is not carelessness and it happens to almost everybody.

Homework time is not observation time. It is management time. Those ten or twenty minutes go on correcting, prompting, redirecting, watching the clock, and answering a question from somebody else in the house.

All of that points at the page. None of it points at the person.

You have been looking at output for a year, and an output has never once told anybody how the thing was made. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent where their own eyes have been pointed, and Psalm 111:2 makes the works known through deliberate seeking.

And there is a second thing, which is the reason this is fixable tonight rather than over months.

Children think out loud and with their bodies far more than adults do. They mutter. They check something twice. They do the easy ones first, or the hard ones first, or start in the middle. They go still at a particular kind of question and get noisy at a different kind.

All of that is visible. It is happening about four feet from you every evening, and none of it is being recorded, because somebody is busy being helpful.

You have a great deal of material available four feet away, and it has never once been hidden from anybody who stopped helping for ten minutes. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a parent curious about a child they already love, and the written word attributes the finding to those who have pleasure in looking.

You were never failing to pay attention, and management has never once been the same activity as observation. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates the two in a parent's evening, and Psalm 111:2 names seeking out as its own act.

Ten minutes, watching, writing three things

So here is the assignment, and it is a different use of the same ten minutes.

Tonight, watch her work for ten minutes and do not help.

Not one correction. Not a prompt. Not a helpful noise. If she asks something directly, say: try it and I will look after.

You have been asked for ten minutes of not helping, and not helping has never once been the same thing as not being there. The Spirit of God is the one who steadies a parent's hands through it, and Psalm 111:2 gives the finding to the one who goes and looks rather than to the one who intervenes.

And write down three things she actually did. Not three things about her character. Three observed actions.

She read the question twice. She did the last one first. She said the numbers under her breath. She stopped at the word rather than at the sum. She checked the one she had already finished.

That is the whole exercise, and it takes exactly as long as the ten minutes that were already going to be spent.

You have been given a use for an evening that costs no extra time at all, and nobody has ever once been asked to find a spare hour for this. The Spirit of God is the one who turns a managed ten minutes into a watched one, and Psalm 111:2 makes the seeking the way the works are known.

And what you will have at the end of it is material. Real, specific, checkable material about how one particular mind works, which is the thing you were told to have and had no way of getting.

Psalm 111:2 makes the works known by those who go looking at them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table with somebody writing down three things and helping with none.

You are permitted to spend an evening looking rather than fixing, and looking has never once been the passive one of the two. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in ten minutes of somebody saying nothing, and the written word gives the finding to the one who seeks it out.

You have three sentences available by tomorrow that you do not have tonight, and they have never once required anything but a pen and ten minutes. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary evening into the place it happens, and Psalm 111:2 puts the knowing downstream of the seeking.