Hugs don’t have superpowers, Dad.
A lesson learned from my 5-year-old son (Volume 1) by Dimitrios Psarras
The following story is true and occurred during the pandemic. It’s about one of the key qualities that people can develop during both their personal and professional life.
Here it goes:
One day, at some point between home-schooling and work-related meetings, my 5-year-old son, Niko asked me if I could play with him for 10 minutes. I said yes and then he told me his game- plan (which surprise surprise he had already thought about it in detail):
“Right Dad, we are going to play superheroes”
“That’s great” I replied. “So, what are your superpowers ?” I asked
“Well, I am running superfast with a superspeed, what are yours, Dad”?
Now this is where it’s getting interesting. I thought that it was a good opportunity for me — as a father — to get him thinking that it’s not everything about super strength, superspeed and/or destructive lasers beams coming from the eyes. A powerful think can be loving and caring about each other. So, I said:
“Hugs”
I still remember my son’s disappointment on the sound of the word.
“Hug’s don’t have superpowers, Dad”. “Can you please have superstrength like Hulk?”
Obviously, there was no room for debate. But the outcome was about a 20-minute battle between superspeed and superstrength and a lot of fun (you can all probably guess the winner)!!!!
But the true lesson and a great reminder was that a good recipe for having fun, collaborate and communicate effectively is people to be on the same page. They will have to have — or create — a common cause and understand each time the context that they are in. They need to put themselves in each other’s shoes and walk!
Perhaps this is what we need the most! Understand each other and walk together!
