My younger son is bright, super bright. All of two and a half, and his reasoning skills are far superior to those of many adults I know. And he never gives up – when he wants to do something, he does it, no mater what.
I know I should be proud of him. Why do I make it sound like a bad thing? Because sometimes, that combination of resourcefulness and determination can be downright dangerous.
It happened a couple of weeks back.
My son had been unusually quiet for too long, which should have set the warning bells ringing, but didn’t because I was enjoying the chance to catch up on some work. Suddenly, he rushing into the room howling at the top of his voice. Tears streaked down a face covered in red powder, and I thought I could detect the faint smell of red-chillies. A trip to the kitchen confirmed my worst suspicions –the floor was covered with red chillie powder, and I could make out the patterns that tiny hands had drawn on it.
Just breathing that air made me splutter – I dared not even think of the agony my son was going through.
Even as I was washing out his eyes with running water, the one thing I kept thinking about was how he had gotten to the chillie powder which I normally stored on a really high shelf. The shelf was out of reach for a normal kid, but nobody can accuse my younger son of being normal. He’d just dragged the dining chair to the kitchen, climbed onto it, pulled himself onto the shelf, and reached the chillie powder. Short of policing him every minutes, there was really very little I could have done to prevent it.
It took a couple of dozen hugs, and a dose of eye drops for my son to get back to normal, but I am yet to recover from the experience.
Sure determination and resourcefulness are great things, especially when combined with above average intelligence. BUT, it is going to be a dangerous combination till he learns t be responsible for the consequences of his actions.
Where are thou, Wisdom?
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