Validation
The other day, I was accompanying my daughter strolling in the park and saw a few toddlers and their parents spending 'quality time' with each other. The apostroph-ied remark in the earlier sentence was because most parents were busy with their digital companions while their offsprings were being themselves, running around and mingling with other kids their age. One particular mother-daughter duo caught my attention. The daughter was trying to learn how to peddle and the mother was encouraging her. Seemingly innocuous, but the encouragement was tilting more towards belting out incessant instructions and was pretty obviously stressful for the child. The poor girl couldn't fathom if she should continue implementing the previous instruction or to realign with the new one. I suppressed my urge to go ahead and help the woman realize the effect that her coaching was doing to the child's psyche. The kid would have done far better without the barrage of unsolicited instruction...