You might have heard the phrase, "Children have ears." Here are some examples of children who did listen even when the grown-ups around them did not execute their best behavior.
"My seven-year-old niece often begged to sleep over at my house. However, last night after her parents had left, I found lice in her hair. I put on an old mattress and warned, 'Don't touch her bed.'
At 10:00 PM, I heard a blood-curdling scream. I raced frantically while my daughter yelled, 'Don't let it get away. We have to save the bed.'
I went numb, thinking the infestation had spread everywhere, but then I saw my six-year-old daughter holding a tiny lice comb and a bottle of my expensive hair conditioner.
Looking up at me with tears in her eyes, she whispered, 'I'm cleaning her so she could sleep in the big bed with me. She was crying because she was lonely on the floor. I told her that the bugs were just lost and that we could wash them away so that she wouldn't be a monster anymore.'
I stood there paralyzed by my own coldness. I had seen an infestation as something to be excluded. I had used my firm voice to shame a child while my daughter had used her quiet kindness to restore her dignity. I rolled up my sleeves, took the comb, and spent the next three hours properly treating my niece's hair.
That night, the success was the lesson my daughter taught me."
Here's another story.
"My daughter was nine when my dad had a stroke and lost most of his speech. He could understand everything, but getting words out was slow and frustrating. The adults around him had started finishing his sentences for him, which I could see he hated.
My daughter never did that. She would just wait however long it took.
One afternoon, I watched her sit with him for 20 minutes while he worked his way through telling her something about a fishing trip he had taken as a kid. She never rushed him, she never filled the silence, and she never looked at her hands. When he finished, she said, 'That sounds like the best day.'
He smiled in a way I had not seen before the stroke."
Here's another story.
"I lost my job in October, and by January, my daughter's birthday, we were still barely making it.
She sat me down with a list of the stuff she wanted. At the end, she said she wanted a princess dress, the real kind with the big skirt. I told her I couldn't. She stared at me. She said she was tired of always having the ugly things, tired of never having what other kids had, and she ran to her room crying.
Around dinner, I heard noise from her room, loud, and I couldn't tell if it was crying or laughing. I knocked, and I opened the door, and her seven-year-old sister had pulled every sheet, curtain, and piece of fabric she could find, and the two of them were in the middle of the floor building a dress. My daughter was standing on the bed while her sister pinned things all around her.
My daughter looked at me and said, 'Look, Dad, I'm a princess.'
Her little sister hadn't said a word to me. She had just gone in there and fixed it the only way she could with whatever she could find."
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