Ping pong

Jonah and Benjamin were playing in a game room with tables set up for pool, foozball, air hockey, etc. A girl of about 7 and little boy of 3 came over and asked them if they wanted to play ping pong.

In trying to figure out who got to play first, she asked them when their birthdays were (quite a clever way to go about it!). Of course, the boys had no idea. Benjamin runs over, asks me, and runs back with the answer. A second later Jonah does the same. I laughed out loud as I watched the girl’s reaction: “Okay, so you guys are twins,” she says good-naturedly, though her strategy was thwarted.

Benjamin wasn’t terribly interested in her one-on-one coaching techniques and drifted in and out, but Jonah was eating it up. She sat him in a tall chair at one end of the table, showed him how to hold the paddle, explained the objective (Jonah: nod, nod. “okay” nod.) and they began a few practice sessions.

She was very patient and encouraging:

“That’s okay, you try again!”

“When you do a mistake don’t cry, it’s just practicing!” (even though he wasn’t the least bit sad)

“Yes, that was good, Jonah!”

And he allowed her to move his arms around as she was demonstrating techniques.

Impressive.

Maybe she has some effective anti-whining techniques that might work on him, too...

Comments

[Roadrunner]

And I thought the point was that boys always respond to encouragement from pretty girls