Children Learn Best From Experience

Mothers try their best to protect their children from injury. Companies have made billions of dollars scaring mothers into buying all kinds of gadgets, safes, steel gates, leashes, and audio and video child monitoring systems to protect our children.

I think back to the cave man days, when the poor Cro-Magnon real parents had no equipment to monitor their toddlers wandering, only to find that their beloved child had become an appetizer for a dinosaur, while they were distracted trying to invent spears and fire. The dinosaur incident is indeed sad, however, the two other siblings had seen the whole event and now listen when their mother and father tell them to stay close. Children learn best from experience.

My eldest son thinks I know nothing, yet when I tell him not to do something and he persists, I quietly say... when you fall, slip, puncture a lung, amputate your leg, etc… etc… "don't come crying to me"... he usually stops. Part of the satisfaction of being a dare devil comes from all the sympathy you receive when an accident occurs. Last year he decided to climb on an old wood fence. I warned of splinters, but he would not listen. Guess what happened... he got a splinter in his hand. He cried and whined about this horrible splinter and put up quite a battle during the removal of the splinter. To this day, he can recall with vivid detail the "splinter attack". His story is that a splinter hopped off the fence in an aggressive way and dug deep into his flesh. His evil parents then chained him down and with rusty tweezers poked and probed at the splinter for about an hour, until finally removing it and then didn't even have a character band aid to offer as solace. He has told this story, embellishing more each month as his verbal skills have developed, to his teacher, grand parents, and assorted individuals at the local playground. The "splinter" is remembered and he stays away from the fence and also enforces a 3-foot "no entry to the fence zone" for his brothers. He learned best from experience.

Tunku Omar

The middle boy declares that he is a "very fast runner". The part he forgets to mention is that he likes to run with pencils and forks. He does not respond to the deprivation of "mommy attention in the event of a warned emergency" routine as well as the older brother. I have found that the use of large, scary words, gets his attention. I've tried unsuccessfully, the "don't run with the lead up on the pencil or you could poke your eye out" line. So I say to him... "If you do not cease and desist with your rapid acceleration around the dining and living compartments of our domain, you risk eye enucleation and therefore will be destined to live a sight depreciated existence with a glass orb floating in the socket which once cradled your iridescent brown iris". He now knows that I am very serious, or have been possessed by a very verbose demon. I am dreading the day when his "pencil marathon" will result in an injury, however the puncture wound will be remembered.

Tunku Emir Zikri

The youngest son never has understood the word "No". He is headstrong, willful and properly provoked he will bite. The two older children have tried to get "rid of him". I've seen them try to run him over while driving their bicycles, teach him to "drown", and tell him he has invisible wings and can fly off the kitchen bar stools. He is surprisingly resilient and reminds me of the "Terminator". No matter how severe an injury he sustains, he brushes himself off and gets back to relentlessly chasing and harassing his targets, i.e., his brothers.

Tunku Uzair

The children have made me realize that part of their growth and development involves experimentation and not listening to a word I say. My kids, like I, learn more from personal experience than from the stories and warnings of others. After all, my kids have had to endure me, learning from experience, to be their mother.

I love my kids.


by Aida Halim