not my photograph
Translated…
We’re done at the office, T’s husband took along her five-year-old daughter to pick her up. As the child entered into the office and saw her, she’d called out to her mom excitedly, “Mom!”, but T had on a straight face and told her daughter, “Didn’t I teach you, that you need to greet people when you see them?”, her daughter had the shy look on her face, looking at the rest of us, with a hint of disappointment from her eyes, turned around, ran back toward her daddy.
“Oh, the one your daughter sees first is you.” “She hadn’t see her mom all day, she’d missed you so!”, all of us, coworkers, started speaking on behalf of her daughter, “Seeing me first? She came from outside, can’t she see, that there are, many of us here? What’s there to think about? I’d taught her, over a hundred times to be courteous already!”, T ranted on to me incessantly.
not my photo still…
T had turned her back toward me, with that angry gait, I’d recalled how when my daughter was younger, how she’d not responded toward someone’s playing with her, instead, she’d started howling because the person was someone she didn’t know; back then, I’d, grilled her too, reason being that she didn’t act like she was happy, that she wasn’t giving back to the person who was trying to play with her and make her laugh, and, it’d shown how I’d not trained my own young well enough, but I’d failed to realize, that although she was still quite young, she’s a separate entity, with emotions of her own, kids are not pets, nor are they the displays that the adults can put on for the rest of the outside world to see.
As parents, we all wanted our kids to behave as we expected them to, and once our expectations fell short, and if we’d not thought about the reason why our young didn’t behave the way we’d wanted them to, and not taught them the right ways to respond, just using our own ways of belief, to hurriedly “correct” their behaviors, so we can gain the approvals of others. And by this way of thought, who, should be the ones needing the education, the parents, or the kids?
Similar situation, I’d bumped into another mom who’d handled it completely different. This mother first patted the child on her head gently, returned the love that her child was seeking from her, then said, “Wow, so many aunties here.” And maybe, the child would still be shy, not knowing what to do, and this mom continued telling her young, “Now, we must greet the aunties, ‘hi, auntie’.”
not my photo still…
This two simple words, the child learns how to greet a stranger, and the adults all around wouldn’t feel awkward. And even if the child still didn’t say “hi”, I think, this sort of a gentle and mild tone of voice, will imprint into the child’s mind, and this, will eventually make the child become more and more confident and steady as the child ages.
The two mother’s difference was in the use of “you” and “we”, you don’t just teach by words, we all want to have well-behaved, courteous children, so, let’s show the kids how it’s done, so they can model us.
So, these are two very different ways that the two mothers handled the situations, and, kids tend to get a little shy with people that they are not familiar with, and, it’s up to the parents to lead them into being friendly with others, to teach them, to socialize them the right way, and this second instance of what the mother did was exactly how it should be done.
Life, the Obstacle Course 