This morning, my son and I were playing our usual game when we play with wooden blocks — how high of a block tower can we stack. We got pretty far, I’d say about 18 blocks tall or so. But like always, the blocks started to lean until…crash, they came falling down. One of the blocks had hit my son on his forehead. From the looks of it, I’d say it was an edge of a block.
My son grabbed his head and started to cry hysterically. So I picked him up, touched his ouchy and comforted him. After a few seconds of crying and the formation of a little welt on his noggin, he stopped crying. I naturally thought he’d want nothing to do with the blocks and probably go play with something else. But to my surprise, he asked me to put him down and he walked over to the stack of blocks on the floor and started stacking again.
I was amazed at how persistent this little guy was. I know if I was him, I would’ve played with the cars or asked for mom or moped around some more. But nope, he just went right back at building blocks.
It made me wonder; is persistence built into us when we’re born and as we go through life we allow fear and past failures to paralyze us from doing greater things in the future?
Thanks kid for the lesson.
I’ll do my best to always be there when you need to cry a little, but I’ll also remind you to get back up, keep going and stay persistent. I’ll share this story of today with you, of how brave you were at just one-and-a-half years of age and how proud I am of you.
