A while back, I took some of my girls to Walmart. We were in the hair/makeup section (me, in hair and makeup? I know.) As we rounded the corner from one aisle to another, we almost hit head on with a couple of little boys having a blast, seemingly, all by themselves. There were two of them and they were probably five and six years old. They had discovered that the soles of their shoes were more like ice skates on the Walmart tiles and they were loving it. My first thought was, 'I wonder where Mom is?' I figured she couldn't be far. Stumbling across a scene like this, it would be easy to judge but I try hard to steer clear of that... God knows that many times you could have taken this same scene and just inserted me and any two of my Lovely Dozen. I figured that mom wasn't far, like I would've been. My first guess was that she was probably lost in the Bermuda Triangle of comparison shopping. I've been guilty of that. We walked past another aisle, navigating around the two little energizer bunnies and just as we passed by, I heard her. It was definitely Mom, and she was definitely lost in the afore mentioned triangle. In the time it took us to pass her by, she said this: "Kids... Come here............." And then, while still staring at the shelves in front of her, she added... "One........ Two.........." As her voice trailed off, I swerved to avoid the two wide-eyed, giggling, VERY oblivious little figure skaters. She stopped short of "Three" as she pulled another bottle of whatever off the shelf. At that point, with my sarcasm in tow, I thought, 'How's that counting thing workin' for ya?' And my daughter Ella and I went on our way. As we walked, I was mentally reviewing the reasons why counting is ineffective and actually teaches our kids the opposite of what we want them to know. (Like waiting for a count-down to listen instead of doing what we ask the first time.) Now, Ella was only two weeks short of her 10th birthday at this time, and she's a smart one. But little did I know, she was thinking about the counting incident, too. And was I surprised by her observation!
"Mom?"
"Yes, Ella?"
"Isn't it sad that some parents actually think that counting works?"
"Um... Yes, Ella. It is...."
Wow. She had her empathy locked in. She felt bad for the parents who touted counting as their best skill. Then, she asked me a thinking question instead of giving a lecture. There was no sarcasm, no criticism. Just wisdom.
Moral of the story: When I grow up, I want to be just like Ella.
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