When Kids Try to Help


Due to a school function, my 7 yo daughter had very few classes all week. It was just “practice, practice, practice”. One evening, she told me that the teachers took the kids to the play area that day since the stage (or something, I wasn’t really paying attention) had to be decorated… by the teachers.

“That meant the kids could run around the play area and have fun”, said my daughter. “And yet, a couple of them went to help the teachers”, she said, as if it was the most abnormal behavior in recorded history.

“Nice kids”, I said just to irritate her.

“No”, she snapped back, “The teachers don’t want them around. The kids just keep getting in the way, dropping things here, misplacing things there”. On a roll now, she continued, “Like the time when one kid said he couldn’t find whatever the teacher asked for. The teacher scolded him nicely, only to find that another kid was holding the thing in her hand with a proud it-was-with-me look”. Don’t ask me what the thing in question was: like I said, I wasn’t really paying attention.

“See”, she ended triumphantly, “This is why the smart kids don’t help. We know we are just getting in the way”. What she seem to being left unsaid was: Those goody two shoes, on the other hand, don’t seem to get it. They insist on helping and get yelled at for their troubles. Serves them right.

The adult version of that lesson, kiddo, is: “No good deed shall go unpunished”.

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