Painful life lessons at a young age

Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents kept telling you things not to do because they knew what would happen if you did them? Did you ever wonder why they told you these same things over and over and over? Do you remember not listening to them and doing those things anyway because you didn't realize that the consequences could be bad?

This morning, one of the things I warn my kids about constantly actually happened. Predictably the result was bad, as I knew it would be. However, in the grand scheme of life this incident is minor but hopefully will have a lasting effect that will help prevent it happening again.

So what was this bad thing that happened?

V and M, probably M for the most part, like to slam doors for no reason.

Yup, you guessed it - someone's fingers got pinched in a slammed door. The door slammer got yelled at by me and sent to his room. The door slammee, quite understandably, was squealing in pain, crying and holding her hand.

Dr. Daddy to the rescue. We stopped the bleeding and cleaned up the cut, putting some anti-bacterial ointment and a big band-aid on it. I told her it would still sting for a while, but that she would be okay.

After V was taken care of I went in to talk to the crying M. I told him that he needed to apologize to his sister and give her a big hug, which he did. She accepted his apology. I know that he still felt bad about it, though.

I told both of them that there is never any need to slam a door and told them that I hoped that they now understand why I keep telling them this. Hopefully both of them learned a valuable lesson today. We shall see...

Some things you just have to experience to understand, both good and bad.