My two youngest children, Richard and Claire practically had their lunch in a rush. They cleared up where they’d eaten, washed their hands and went right back to their laptops to continue with their games. My daughter, Claire quickly informed her brother that she wanted to play another game but her brother convinced her otherwise.

Richard is her immediate elder brother and oh he loves to compete.

He suggested that they play an online racing game to see who would finish first but Claire said she was not interested. With a little more persuasion, she gave in.  “I would play just one round”, she said. Still, that did not deter Richard from going ahead with his intention to compete.

Richard won that round. It was the only one they played as Claire kept her promise and moved on to another game. Richard wasted no time dancing and chanting his own praises; saying how awesome he is. Claire watched him; at first with indifference and later on with fury. Understandably so! Like the big bad wolf in the story of the three little piggies, I watched my daughter huff and puff. “Why are you so considerate?” she snapped. She let out a couple more words but frankly I did not hear anything else. I wondered what she meant by considerate. Lol. Yeah, I thought long and hard…okay perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but I trust you get what I mean. I was almost choked with trying to restrain myself from laughing out loud so as not to upset my daughter seeing how unhappy she already was.

Like a good referee would, I quickly intervened before it degenerated any further. I tried to calm my daughter down and appealed to my son, Richard to stop provoking his sister. I took each one aside and had small talks with them and then brought them together to explain why it was unnecessary and usually unhealthy to have such competitions. Since I was still stunned by the choice of words my daughter used when she was angry I’d asked her to try to explain what she thought the word meant. She said she thought considerate was another word for selfish and/or annoying. Interestingly Richard did not understand what she said but also assumed she was expressing how annoying he can be. In a bizarre way or perhaps luck, Richard got the intended meaning of Claire’s choice of vocabulary so we can safely conclude that communication was somewhat effective. I explained to them both what the meaning of the word was. English lesson done and dusted!

I made sure that Richard apologized to his sister for being naughty and we ended with our signature group hug.

P.S.S: Have you had instances where you had no clue what the other person was saying but like my son, you ‘winged’ it? Lol Do share.

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