The other day I attended a class at Sam’s preschool on “Raising Your Child’s IQ.” Lots of the teaching had to do with providing a stimulating environment — for your child, not for necessarily for yourself. You gave up that right long, long ago. So after the class was over, I picked up Sam from the babysitting area and we headed out into the bright, sunny day, full of good intentions. I was all fired up to be Mommy-of the Year or at least Mommy-of -the-Next-Five-Minutes. As we strolled across the parking lot, I spied an unusual-looking yellow and green caterpillar inching along the gravel. I stopped, crouched down on my knees and showed it to Sam who was quite intrigued. I could feel his IQ rising as we discussed the caterpillar. When Sam asked why the caterpillar wasn’t moving anymore, I explained he was scared (scared stiff?) because we were so much bigger than it was and it was afraid we might hurt it. Oh no, not us, we agreed.
Right about then, Sam’s classmate David, David’s mommy, and his little brother Josh came out of the building as well, and they happily jumped into the caterpillar appreciation exercise. David’s mommy crouched down too, and I suspect that she was trying to boost both kids’ intelligence at the same time. Dang, she’s good! Josh is about two and so really wanted to touch the caterpillar himself. We held him back, explaining how fragile the caterpillar is and that we don’t want to hurt him. In a split second now frozen in my mind, Josh lunged forward and stomped on the caterpillar. As he lifted his wee Stride Rite sneaker, there lay a nasty smear of caterpillar blood and guts. Alas, the caterpillar was no more. The caterpillar games were officially over. It was a “teachable moment” as Henry Louis Gates would say. Now exactly what would we teach them? Where was the executive director of the preschool when you needed her most?
David-and-Josh’s-mommy and I exchanged looks of horror. She began to lament, “Josh, why did you do that? Oh, this is so sad! Oh, this is so sad.”
Trying to do my part, I chimed in, “Wow! This is really sad. The poor caterpillar.”
We stood there in dumbfounded silence for a minute, and then I suggested, “How about if we say a prayer for the caterpillar?” A good prayer never hurts, right?
Sam jumped in, “Dear God, Please help the caterpillar and make him be alive again. Ah-men.”
David-and-Josh’s-mother commented, “Thank you, Sam, for leading us in prayer.” I resisted the overwhelming urge to guffaw. We stood there for a minute of two; we were all feeling pretty deflated. Poor Josh just looked entirely confused. He had just wanted to see what would happen if he stepped on it. Unfortunately now he knew, a lesson he would not soon forget.
Eventually we wandered back into the world. Later in the day I ran into David-and-Josh’s mommy in the carpool line for pickup. She shook her head, ”The boys have been so upset all afternoon.”
Well, I don’t know if the Smooshed Caterpillar Incident raised any of the boys’ IQs, but their emotional intelligence got a great boost.
LibbY