Out of the Mouth of Babs

My quirky, beautiful, wise Babs.

My daughter, Abby whose nickname is Babs, really impressed me the other day.  As I picked her up from middle school, she told me about her day while we drove home.  It was her eleventh birthday that day and I expected her to be talkative and chirpy from the moment she sat in the car.  However, her cousin dominated the conversation by relating a story in which he had almost punched a kid in the face for teasing and mocking him earlier that day.  Abby remained silent through his story and then after he left, she turned to me and said, "He really could have handled that better." Very interested to hear what she had to say, I replied, "How so?"  She then told me a story about how some boy had picked on her in band class, calling her hyper and mental and geeky.  I expected her to then tell me how she responded with some choice cut-down of her own as she is incredibly intelligent and witty.  I also expected it because it would have been exactly what I would have done at her age.  She surprised me, however, by saying something entirely, beautifully different.

Abby said that she just looked at him and felt badly for the other kids he had picked on earlier and how she felt badly for the boy too because he had been the object of mockery as well.  So instead of continuing the snarkiness and meanness and negative energy, she decided to end it.  She said, "I told him 'I am me and you are you. I laugh and giggle and am quirky.  You aren't those things, but something else and that's cool. We should appreciate that difference and just leave it at that."   I smiled at the maturity and wisdom of those words, and then asked how the boy responded to her statement.  She said he looked at her, but really didn't know what to say and was quiet for the rest of the class period.  He didn't pick on her or anyone else for the remainder of the day.

Some of the wisest words come from the mouths of children.  They don't over-think things like adults, they don't imbue much subtext into their statements.  They just say it from a purity of youth that adults really can't access anymore.  I was proud of her innate sense of what was the right thing to do, but also because it proved to me that she listens when I speak.  She listens when I tell her that words do matter, that she should be kind when she can, that negative energy shouldn't be fed and fostered.  She amazed me with her maturity and with her emotional intelligence and overall with her kindness.  She could have very well come back with some cutting, hurtful remark but chose not to do that.  She is, at eleven, a far better woman than I.  I am so lucky that she's my daughter.