STOVES

When I think of how different my kids are I am always drawn to the comparison of a mother teaching her children not to touch a hot stove.

First child – I will tell her not to touch the stove because it will burn her. She’ll look at me and think about it….. Wait until I’m not looking and then put her full hand right on the burner and scorch her entire palm. She will be dying in agony but say absolutely nothing. She will hide her pain and it will most likely fester and be extremely sore but she will never admit it is painful. I will see the scare sometime later and she’ll fess up that she had in fact touched the hot stove and got burnt. Lesson learned.

Second Child – She’ll proudly announce that I am in fact wrong. Stoves don’t burn you when you touch them. Just to prove me wrong she will proudly announce that she is going to touch the stove and demand I watch her do it. Nothing I say will stop her. It will burn her and she’ll scream. She’ll be mad that I was right and probably blame me….. for a while and then she’ll come to the fact that she burnt herself. Lesson learned

Third Child – This is my favorite. She’ll think about what I told her about the stove. She’ll analyze and try to figure out the ways that she might accomplish touching the stove without burning herself. She’ll put a game plan in place and decide to do it. She’ll touch the stove, get burnt and never….and I mean never admit she ever touched it… but she will have a lesson learned.

Fourth Child – The gender might give this one away. He’ll just trust me that he’ll get burnt. He’ll have watched everyone else and just know that touching a stove isn’t safe. But he hasn’t quite made it out of the teenage years so this way of thinking still may evolve. Stay tuned!