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Friday, December 11, 2009

A Mom with a different attitude.

A small boy was trying to remove a bottle of milk. when he lost his grip on the slippery bottle it fell, spilling its contents all over the kitchen floor - a sea pool of milk!

When his mother came into the kitchen, instead of yelling at him or punishing him, she said, "My dear son, what a great and wonderful mess you have made! I have rarely seen such a huge puddle of milk. Well, the damage has already been done. Would you like to get down and play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean it up?"

The small guy felt so much happy and played in the Pool of milk for a while.

After a few minutes, his mother said, "Son, you know, whenever you make a mess like this, eventually you have to clean it up and restore everything to its proper order. So, how would you like to do that? We could use a sponge, a towel, or a mop. Which do you prefer?"

He chose the sponge and they cleaned up the spilled milk.

His mother then said, "You know, what we have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively carry a big milk bottle with two tiny hands. Let's go out in the back yard and fill the bottle with water and see if you can discover a way to carry it without dropping it."

The little boy learned that if he grasped the bottle at the top near the lip with both hands, he could carry it without dropping it. The guy then realized mistakes were just opportunities for learning something new, which is, after all, what scientific experiments are all about. Even if the experiment "doesn't work," we usually learn something valuable from it.

Wouldn't it be great if all parents would respond the way she responded to him?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all respond to people who we manage in a similar manner too? Help someone learn from his / her mistakes?

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