When my daughter had a birthday, I invited her class at her Montessori. Traditional Montessoris use a mixed age classroom so she had lots of different aged kids in her class. It was the start of the school year so I was meeting some parents for the 1st time. One little boy's mom and dad came up to introduce themselves saying, "Oh, we had to come to Amelia's birthday! She's a hero in our house!" They then related on the first day of school, a bigger boy had pushed their son out of line to take his place. My daughter took the younger boy's hand and told the bully he couldn't do that and he needed to go to the end of the line. The mom saw it all.

I felt like they had given ME the birthday gift of a wonderful glimpse of who my daughter was becoming. And by the way, I asked her about what she'd done and she brushed it off as no big deal!

A.