The art of, finding the items he’d, lost, translated…
My son, being naturally, scatter-brained, he’d often left what was important wherever he went, then forgot them. As he’d recalled the items, and tried to find what he’d misplaced, the memories were already, severed off, and, he’d, had to do that crying hard, shaking the world up, then, he would gain the chance of giving up on recovery of the lost items. I’d read the basics of the Satir communication model, knew that the child may feel unsettled in the faces of change, and I’d, usually, just let him blow off his steam, but, it all accumulated, my son hadn’t improved on his memories, and his skills of recovery stayed back, and it seemed, that I am needed, to help him out.
Last year, the family went to Bangkok, on the second day, we were about to exit the gates of the metro rail stations, my son started to cry, he’d, accidentally, left his wallet inside the trains. We aren’t familiar with the deities of Thailand, so, it wouldn’t do us any good. My wife took my daughter, exited the stations, they went shopping first, I’d pulled my son to the side, to try and come up with a recovery plan, “let’s not care that you’re in Bangkok right now, if you’re in Kaohsiung, and lost your wallet on the MRT, how would you ask the station attendants for help?”, my son was trapped by his own emotional storms, his mind still went blank, so I’d, drafted up a plan to get help on his notebook, “the next thing we need to do, translate this passage into English”. My son nodded, and started, smiling again through his tears.,
We’d copied the translated passage onto a piece of paper, handed it to the service station to ask for help. After the workers at the station read the page, they started discussing, and I’d used my broken English, added, the man seemed to understood, after he’d checked with us about the contents inside my son’s wallet and its appearances, the wallet was, returned to my son, and thus, ended this, crisis of losing things in Bangkok, this crisis became an opportunity for education for my son, and it’d, increased the local interactions of the Taiwanese and the Thai people too.
illustration from UDN.com
The following day after we went for a swim in the hotel, my son lost his goggles. I had him write out a plan of action, including when the last time he saw his own goggles were, the location of it, listed all the places we passed on the way to the pool from our hotel room, we’d backtracked on the route, checked each and every location we’d searched off, and finally, we’d found the goggles, right underneath the beach chairs by the poolside.
These trainings had, helped my son with his abilities of finding the things he’d lost more or less, as we’d returned back to Taiwan, he’d still, misplaced his things quite often, but I’d intervened into the matter less and less. Just last night, my son got in the food, he’d, taken out the eleven action figures he’d collected to battle them with one another, it was like the gladiators fighting in the Colosseum. Then, not long afterward, came a loud SCREAM from the living room, my son accidentally kicked the table, flipped it over, and the action figures went flying all over the places, he’d used the flashlights to find them under the couch, and yet, he was still short on two. I watched from the sidelines, this time, he’d used a different method, he’d, repeatedly, dropped the toys on the floors, allow them to bounce all over the place, I’d asked him why he was doing that? He’d told me, “I’m bouncing the action figures that are close to the one I hadn’t found yet, to see the possible places it might bounce to.” Good boy, you’d known to use the trial-and-error method to solve the problems you are encountering now in your life, which fitted to the basis of the new curricula of their schooling year!
And so, this kid still hadn’t changed how he’d, lost things, it’s just that this time as he’d lost his things, he’d not flown into panic mode, instead, he’d come up with a plan of action to recover what he’d lost, and that, is what he’d learned, through his experiences of misplacing things in his life so far, and I’m sure, that he will misplace things less and less with the time that comes to pass.
Life, the Obstacle Course 