A few years ago I needed to find a way to teach my son not to always focus on the negative. So one day as he was having his afternoon snack I placed a red circle sticker in the middle of my forehead and sat down across from him.
"Hi, sweetie," I said. "Do you notice anything?"
"Yeah, Mom. You have a sticker in the middle of your forehead."
"Is that all that you see?" I asked.
"Are you trying to be like those women from India with those red dots on their foreheads?"
"No, I'm not trying to be anyone else," I assured him. "What else do you see?"
He thought about it, and tried again: a target? (no); a zit band aid? (definitely no); a third eye? (the better to see you with ... but no).
I finally took pity on him.
"I know you see this red spot on my forehead," I said. "But don't you also see me?"
He was a little taken aback. We then talked about how focusing on one aspect of a person limits our understanding of that person, just as focusing on the negative makes it all too easy to let the one thing that hasn't gone right distract us from everything else that has.
He's a bright boy; he got the point.
I used this same lesson one day when I was teaching high school and some of my students had been laughing at another teacher's quirky character trait, a teacher who stayed after school to help students with their homework and who attended every single sporting event to cheer for them. I drew a circle in the middle of a big piece of paper and went around the room asking everyone what they saw. They saw a circle, a black hole, a planet . . . but NOT ONE person said they saw a piece of paper. When I pointed this out to them and mentioned the teacher's name, they became quiet.
They, too, got the point.
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns,
or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
~Abraham Lincoln
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| Timothy, Italy 2006 |
9 comments:
Once again you amaze me and once again I will be following in your footsteps in this example to my pack of kiddos (when the time demands it).
How clever! your son will always remeber that lesson! What a cool mom....effective too ;)
What a fabulous lesson and how cool that you were able to use it in the classroom, too!
I love this! I need that lesson myself, sometimes! You are a way cool mom! &:o)
Wonderful....thank you
You're an inspired mom, Bia!
This is a very good post Bia. I will link and translate it for Familia en construcción.
j.a.varela
Bravo! Bravo! This is a fantastic way to teach such an important lesson!
*sigh* Giving up reading your blog was indeed a sacrifice over those forty days of Lent!
A great lesson, Bia. But relative to those thorn bushes, for some things (like death of a loved one) you CAN understand them, but they still hurt.
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