Encouragement & Approval

While at the library today the lesson I was taught was not by a book or a lecture or from intense study, or even research. It was by a 3-year-old girl in a pink dress and snow boots. She was running through the aisles until she caught my eye. She looked at me slowly, carefully measuring if I was a friend or not, I smiled and she just looked back with big brown eyes. My eyes dropped back to my book and she bent down to pick up some garbage on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her slowly bring it to her mouth, I looked up and whispered “no, no, that’s yucky, can you put it in the trashcan?” I motioned to the trashcan 3 ft away. She ran over threw it in and looked at me for my approval. I smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up, and her cute chubby 3 year old face broke into a grin to melt any hard nosed New Yorker. She looked around for more trash, inevitably found it and ran back to the trashcan and after disposing of it, eagerly looked back at me for approval, I gave her another thumbs’ up and she started giggling. This went on for several minutes until her mom came around the corner and seeing her daughter picking up trash ran to her and said “No, no throw it away!” (Her Mother was very unaware of the good her daughter was actually doing, and instead only saw the "bad")

Children seek for approval from adults, and when they don’t find it in their parents, they turn to complete strangers, as shown by the adorable brown haired, chocolate eyed, little girl who picked up handfuls of trash at the library all for a simple thumbs’ up from me a complete stranger. So make of that what you will, but as for me I learned a great deal from this little girl.