June 9, 2009 08:25 by
danaOften times as parents we ask ourselves whether we are doing a good job; whether what we say and so is having a positive impact on our children. More often than not, the answer is rather humbling, but occasionally there are glimpses of success. Here is a small one of ours, with a bit of humour.
The other day I was working in garden in the backyard with Miriam and we came across a yellow badminton birdie. Miriam picked it up, looked at it and promptly threw it over the fence to our neighbour's yard without so much as a word. When I asked her why she did that, she replied, "It's not ours, we don't have any yellow ones." Our neighbours, a middle-aged couple, who have an adult son are not known to be avid badminton players, but there was a day a few months ago that their son had a few friends over and set up a badminton net. Upon prying a bit further, I discovered that every couple of days for the past couple of months, Miriam will find the yellow birdie in our yard and dutifully throw it back over the fence. Apparently our neighbours believe it is ours. This made me chuckle a bit, so I thought I should let Miriam know this and suggested that next time we just hold onto it. She was adamant that we couldn't possibly keep it, because it isn't ours, "and that would be stealing." I asked her what she thought we should do, to which she replied, "I guess we'll just keep playing tennis with the neighbours."