babee tales

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Parenting tips #1

Learning how to be a parent is really about knowing how to deal with the darnedest situations that the kids put you in. What do you do when your little one drops her bubble blower into the bubble bottle (filled with liquid soap), empties its contents trying to get the blower out, and screams blue murder over the loss of her precious bubbles?

Solution #1: Distraction. You try your best to switch her attention to the sand castle, the dogs on the beach, anything but the bubbles and bubble blower. But kids have a one-tracked mind when they are upset - this is doomed to failure.

Solution #2: Trickery. You replace the liquid soap with seawater, in the hope that your little one won't notice the difference. Alas, kids are far too smart - they realize immediately that the seawater doesn't generate bubbles - and the wailing only redoubles.

Solution #3: Ingenuity. You take your little one, swim out deeper into the open sea, and show her how dipping an empty bubble bottle into the ocean generates a huge whoosh of bubbles as the air escapes from it. The bubbles are loud and frothy and your little one thinks this new game of making bubbles in the sea, is just as interesting as blowing bubbles in the air.

Parenting - the art of the possible :)