Lessons Your Children can Teach You

The boys have been driving me crazy (as usual) but they made me ponder over a few things for the past 2 days. After Y threw his toy in the dustbin in defiance, purposely played with his chair and fell off and later poured Milo all over the floor, I decided it's time to get out of the house.

We went to a playground further away from our home. With the hot sun, the playground was quiet, with only 1 boy around the same age as them. I found out later from his Granny that he was just a month older than them.

I have to use the word "brat" to describe him. He scolded his Granny "I'll beat you!!" whenever she asked him not to do something.

Y&K were playing happily at the playground when this boys decided to rush to anything K walked to. I was displeased but still asked K to play with other stations. K was very disappointed whenever the station he walked to was being hijacked by the boy, he just waited and went to it happily when the boy moved away.

Then, we were at the slide and the boy, again, got in front of him and even pushed him. K lost his balance and fell on the ground but he picked himself up. The boy then refused to slide down, sitting at the top of the slide. I was getting irritated as we have tried our best to avoid him. So, I told K to say "excuse me" to the boy and go down the slide first but K answered, "let the boy go first.". I was surprised and luckily, the boy slid down and K went after.

K wanted the swing and was walking towards it when the boy, AGAIN, dashed for it. I distracted K and asked him to ride on a motorcycle. The boy left the swing when he sees K on the motorcycle. K wanted to go to the swing when he saw the swing was empty. We walked over and was about to get up when the boy saw and ran over demanding the swing. This time, I was getting very annoyed. I believe I should teach my sons to be assertive instead of giving in to a boy with unreasonable demands time after time. I ignored the boy and carried K on the swing. Y was already on the other swing then. The boy screamed and ran to his Granny crying. I paid no notice to him but the boys didn't play long before they have this conversation between themselves:

Y: K, let's get down and let the boy have a turn. 
K: I want to get down and let the boy have a turn. 

I helped him down and he even ran to the boy and told him "it's your turn.".

I felt so ashamed. I was being petty as I think I was angry with the boy for pushing K but the boys has displayed such magnanimousness and also showed empathy to the boy who weren't nice at all.

Lessons I learnt today,

• Don't fret over small stuff. It's just a push and K wasn't hurt, what's the big deal.
• Forgive and forget.
• Show empathy, be nice, even to nasty people.

So, here are my lovely boys, they seem extremely lovely today just now, until an hour later when they started throwing food on the floor and running away from me refusing to take their bath.