Kids teaching International Relations"

Posted by Pramod Sadalage on Tuesday, September 26, 2006

You learn a lot from kids, and this lesson I will never forget.

So I’m at Lyon (in France) airport and there are a couple of kids (4-5 year olds) playing in the airport play area which had slides, call these two kids TA and TB my daughter call her AA joins these kids and they all start playing with the slide.

All is going well when a family with two kids, mom, dad and grandma join in, mom and dad are staying away and grandma takes the kids lets call them FA and FB to play on the slides. Grandma makes the previous kids (AA, AB, AA) stop playing and clears the slide for her grand kids (EA and EB) to play the slide. Grandkids start playing for a while and TA and TB are just waiting around not knowing what to do. AA by now has moved on to a different toy in the airport.

Sometime later TB opens his bottle of water to get a drink and pours it all on FA. FA is now totally wet and grandma is furious at TA and TB. Now she has to take FA away to get a new shirt and get FA dry. TA and TB by now start playing with the slide, happy that they have control of the slide.

The incident may sound run of the mill, if I don’t revel the nationalities of the kids involved TA and TB are from a Arabic country. FA and FB are from a European country. This little incident has taught me that when you push people around they are going to react and the reaction may sometimes be violent. It has also taught me to stay out and let the kids play and resolve their issues themselves.

These lessons are so relevant in these times. Wish our leaders learnt something from kids.