On eating grass, and other life lessons

Noah was playing with a "magic wand" craft that he made last weekend at a birthday party for one of his classmates.

It has swirly ribbon hanging from the end of it.

He gets really upset when that ribbon gets tangled.

Tonight as he was swinging his wand around, Travis stuck his hand out, directly into the path of the swirly ribbon, and got said ribbon all tangled up.

Noah said, "Travis messed up my wand!!"


Travis: "No I didn't! You're just trying to get me in trouble!"


Noah: "No I'm not! You did too mess it up!"


This went on for a few minutes, back and forth, no-I-didn't-yes-you-did, then Noah turned to me and said, "Who is telling the truth?"


Seriously? I couldn't possibly get a better after-school-special-lesson opportunity if one was served to me on a silver platter.

I said, "It's time for a little lesson on perspective."

I grabbed a blade of grass from the back yard, and asked them to tell me how an ant would describe that blade of grass.

"It's a giant green thing!"
"It would take me nineteen minutes to walk across it!"
"It's really heavy!"


Then I asked them to tell me how an elephant would describe it.

"It's a tiny green thing!"
"I can barely see it!"
"I can squash it in one step!"


Then I said, "Okay, who is telling the truth? The ant, or the elephant?"

----

Silence.

Noah said, "......me?" (That kid's always trying to win an argument.)

I explained that they both are telling the truth, it's just that they have wildly different perspectives.

We went on:

Let's use a different example. If I put a piece of pizza in front of Sophie, she would say, "Yum!! Pizza! I LOVE pizza!!" But if I put that same piece of pizza in front of Travis, he would say, "Pizza doesn't taste good. No thank you." Who is telling the truth?


"They both are!"


That's right, they both are telling the truth, they just have different perspectives.


So we talked a little about how you can disagree with someone because they are seeing something from a different perspective, but it doesn't make that person wrong. And that the sooner they are able to understand someone else's perspective, the easier they will find it to get along with people.

Sophie tried to learn this lesson, too, but she didn't get it so much. She was more enthralled with the fact that we brought a blade of grass in from outside. She interjected, "If you put a blade of grass in front of me, I would say, "YUM! I love grass!"


Yup, sounds about right.