Photo by Daniel Cheung

Many thanks to Sonya for hosting the Three Line Tales! Yes, I’m late this time, I’m sorry!

Anyway, here’s mine for the week!

Shoes caked in mud, stains all over the shirt, his mother sighed heavily, wondering what to do for her poor 5 year old as she eyed the pattern of the stains closely.

The next day, he came home, rushing to the bathroom to wash the words scribbled on his socks when he saw it – a small model of the oh-so-coveted storm trooper holding a paintbrush. 

Ten years later, a successful painter, he still kept the figure in his showcase, right next to the socks that had the words – Painting is for sissies. Once again it was proved, Mother knew best.

©Sonali Mukherjee

I actually found this prompt to be quite a difficult one. 

There were three basic things I wanted to get across from the TLT

  1. It is perfectly fine to stand out, to not fit. What is generally not mentioned is how lonely that path might end up being if you have no support.
  2. Bullying is a problem. It destroys the self worth in the eyes of the child being bullied. Sometimes, it goes unnoticed by their parents/peers and might end up being really bad for the child.
  3. A little appreciation can go a long way. Generally all kids crave is the appreciation of those older than them. I’m not saying you say everything they do is brilliant. I’m just saying, once in a while its OK to say that their painting looks good or that they wrote that essay well. Being overly critical of your kids will simply push them away.

Most of these thoughts were from a video I recently watched of Simon Sinek.

He talks about the millenials, which is what he calls kids who were born after 1994. He talks about parenting strategies, environment and a pot of other things. Do watch the video if you get time.