Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

Had been to a family function recently. Not to mention separately there were lot of kids playing all around, acting as if they were caged by their parents, all these days in their houses. There were some 3-4 toddlers [all of age group 7-8 Yrs] running all around, crying, beating up each other, complaining to their mothers, running from one end of the corridor to the other. I was observing them throught out. This went on even after the lunch also.. I expected them to just lie asleep in some corner of the house after the lunch... but the food made them even more fiercer I believe. I was getting a bit irritated by their silly complaints [I agree, we would also be like them at their ages..]. Then just to make them sit quietly for some time, I called all 3 of them and told them that if they sit quietly for 10 mins i would give them a chocolate. Thank God, that trick really helped me. They sat quietly on three adjacent chairs for first 5 mins or so.. then one of them started giggling for no reason. Then they slowly started wagging their tails one after the other. My warning dint help much.. At the end of the 10 mins, i gave a chocolate to the quietest among them... The moment I handed over the chocolate to 1, one among the other two started screaming as if she is going to blow the roof off.. It was quite unexpected for me.. I tried to convince her saying that BEST ONE WON, and U WEREN'T THE BEST, HENCE U WONT GET THE CHOCOLATE. I think these words never got into her mind... She complained about not getting a chocolate to her mother [her mother was noticing all this from a distance]. Her mother also tried to convince her.. but failed miserably.. Then just to get rid of that noise, she gave her a pack of chocolates [!!!?????] that she had got in her bag. This made the baby quiet, it ran away giving me a stare of 'I got it anyways..'

There is a message i want to convey to all mothers / guardians of young kids here. The above anecdote would look simple as the mother found a short term solution for the problem of crying child, but she has made a major mistake here. Here the child is not getting to know the importance of winning a competition / race. In turn its not getting the toil put behind winning a race, the child assumes a loser's scream will force her/his mother to give everything s/he desires in life. But neither life is so simple nor an angel like mother will always listen to ur grievances through out ur life. The ideal thing could have been that mother using this petty competition as a valuable lesson of life for the child. Why can't mothers tell the children, if u wanna get the chocolate, u have to wrk for it ??

Now lets view the incident in the perspective of child who won the chocolate... the lesson it would have got is disastrous ! Even though she won the competition, she ended up getting a single chocolate... but the child which cried after losing the competition got a bunch of it... My God.. It would leave an impression on the winning child as if winning the race made her a LOSER... At the end of the day, the winning child would lose the importance of winning... It would also follow the easier path as of the losing child.. So i request all the mothers in the world to make their children realise the importance of winning a prize by wrking for it.. by fighting for it.. by sweating for it.. And not by CRYING for it...

Quote: Nobody wins a silver, they just lose GOLD