I was helping Jordan build a mother of a Star Wars Lego spaceship. For each step in the Lego instruction manual, we would sift through the hundreds of pieces of Lego to find the two or three pieces we needed to match exactly what was required. Sometimes these pieces were easy to find because there were so many of that one piece while others seemed impossible.
In his room, he had a little R2D2 he recently received as a birthday present through the mail. When you press a tiny button on the front of the robot, it makes its trademark sound effects.A few times he would make R2D2 talk and each time he did this, he translated what it said.
"'You need to be patient. Slow down.'"
"'You're going too fast. This is going to take time.'"
I was struck by this because Jordan would never say these things to me directly. He's indirect like most boys his age, even more to me.
Though I hope some day he'll be more comfortable critiquing me or we're going to end up in therapy ten years from now, "translating" through action figures.