The post-lunch hours always feel a bit sluggish, especially when you’re trying to read and a small human is vibrating with energy right next to you. My nephew had his whiteboard and markers; I had my book. Only one of us was enjoying uninterrupted focus, and it wasn’t me.
Every few minutes:
“Buaaa, wipe!”
I’d sigh, wipe, attempt to read again…
“Buaaa, wipe!”
Eventually I said, gently, “Sweetheart, I need a little reading time. You do your work, and let me do mine.”
He paused, processed, and actually went along with it.
Small boundary. Big win.
A little later, he held up the board like a contestant on a game show.
A 4 and what looked like a T.
“T?” I guessed.
He gave me the most exasperated look an almost 4-year-old can muster.
“No, bua. It’s r.”
I showed him how I write it.
He corrected me immediately: “No, small r — rotate it.”
And honestly? When I tilted the board, the kid had a point. Children have their own brand of genius.
Then came the part that always makes his mother and me quietly watch him a little closer:
He traces certain numbers from right to left even though he knows how they look. Nothing alarming, but one of those tiny quirks you track with curiosity and care.
Before we could think about it too much, he switched roles.
“Bua, sad ho jao.”
“Why?” I asked.
He flipped the board around proudly:
He had made a scoreboard.
Six goods for himself.
Two crosses for me.
I laughed. “Why should I be sad?”
He blinked in confusion. To him, sadness was the logical response to a cross.
“If I have two crosses, it just means I need to practise more. And if you have six goods, it means you’re doing well — and you can still do better too. We both keep trying, right?”
He considered this, nodded, erased the whole thing, and moved on.
But I stayed with that moment longer than he did.
Because a few years ago?
This would’ve knocked the wind out of me.
Being “graded,” even by a child — that old ache would’ve bubbled up: not being enough, not performing well enough, not meeting impossible expectations. When you grow up around people who confuse money with authority and approval with leverage, even a tiny cross can feel like a verdict.
Not today.
Today, I could sit there, look at those two crosses, and feel… fine.
Light.
Even amused.
And that’s when it hit me:
Sometimes mindful parenting isn’t about how patiently you teach a child to write their 4s from left to right.
Sometimes it’s about how gently you’re learning to treat the child inside yourself.
Kids mirror us.
Not our words — our relationship with effort, mistakes, self-worth, and imperfection.
In that small, chaotic, post-lunch world of whiteboards and crosses, I wasn’t just teaching him something.
I was noticing how much I have grown.
The old me would have spiralled.
The current me smiled, shrugged, and kept reading my book.
Maybe that’s the real “good” I earned today — not on his scoreboard, but on my own.
If this story resonated with you — the quiet healing, the small moments that reveal who we’re becoming — you might like the little corner I’m building on Substack. It’s where I write about curiosity, the gut microbiome, home fermentation, mindful living, and the tender, everyday stories that shape us.
It’s a growing community of people who pay attention to the subtle things.
Come sit with us, share your reflections, and explore these threads together.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: yasara hansani on Unsplash
