What I Learned from My Nephews

Can you think of any life lessons from children you know? 😀 [🖼❗]

As you may know, I’ve been on vacation the last two weeks! In case you were wondering, I was mostly at my in-law’s (who lives in a city on a large island) and spent time with husband, parents-in-law and my sister-in-law plus her two sons (ages 11 and 8), though I spent a few days at Hat Yai and Songkhla, Thailand! It was a nice vacation, especially when I don’t have to plan anything and just have to follow the others (my kind of holiday! Thanks husband and sis-in-law for doing the planning). 😆

When I was on vacation, I was determined to shut down my working brain and just enjoy the days! However, when I spent time with my nephews (I was kinda their babysitter 😛), there are a few things they did that I just feel at awe and made me want to write about! If they can do these, why not adults?

So here are the list of actions my nephews took that made me feel at awe. 😀

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Part 1: Gaming Time

A little background: I introduced a new video game to my nephews as I thought they’d like! It’s called Ori and the Blind Forest, with beautiful, colourful hand-drawn graphics, a short but touching story and can be difficult to play especially if you’re not used to action games on a controller. (I’ll write a separate post on this game in due time, I promise!)

The younger kid wasn’t too interested in it (though he did like watching others play), but the older one loved it! Except that I can see it’s quite difficult for him, especially when he’s used to mobile and computer games rather than console controllers. Think of the game as an hours-long obstacle course not unlike those on the American Ninja Warrior show, and a single mistake can force you to restart from your last checkpoint, and even my controller-trained hands make me lose quite a few times in this game!

He’d reach a particular section of the “obstacle course” and keep makimg mistakes that forced him to restart from before that section, over and over and over… and over.

Sounds sad, right? What’s so awing about it?

Reaction to Mistakes

Each time he made a mistake and had to restart he’s shout, “Argh!” Which was normal, then followed by, “I LOVE YOU, [CHARACTER]!”

Wow. Well, I knew he was being sarcastic, but wow, what difference it makes! Instead of “ARGH! WHY?!!”, saying “ARGH! I LOVE YOU!” sounded waaaay better. Even when I knew it was sarcastic. 😆

If we were to apply it to our own life mistakes and shout “I LOVE YOU!” instead of whatever we first think of, wouldn’t that make us more loving towards ourselves? 😀

Succeeding with Own Strength

Upon watching him losing for the 10th time in a row, once in a while I suggested if he’d like me to get past just that little section for him. He always unhesitantly said no, he wanted to do it himself!

How awing is that? 😀

Tenacity to Succeed

I’d say this little guy has the tenacity to succeed! Even when he lost for the 20th time in a row and I suggested taking a break for a while (because I knew how frustrating losing can be), he’d go, “No, I want to continue! I can do this, I almost got it!”

And yes, he did succeed eventually, with a loud victory cry!

He encountered this many times throughout the game in the 2 weeks we were together, and each time he never backed down. What a little fighter. 😀

By the way, do you want to know how incredible his gaming losses were? I finished Easy Mode of the game with around 260 deaths, and he reached 2/3 of the game in Easy Mode with 1000 deaths, and he still wanted to continue if only we had more vacation time! That’s how much tenacity he has. 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻

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Part 2: More Gaming Time

For the younger nephew, I introduced a sandbox survival game called Terraria, which is kind of like 2D Minecraft (with quite a bit of differences but I won’t cover that here 😛). It’s quite interesting and allows you to build structures as well, which is what he enjoys. 😀

Sharing

Even though he was the one with the gaming time, sometimes he asks his older brother for help and shares his gaming time with him! It’s really nice to see them playing together. 😀

There was even once when I told him he could play for 1 hour (as per his mum’s instructions), and he said he’d play for 45 minutes. I asked about the last 15 minutes, and he just gave a shy smile. Later his mum suggested that maybe he wanted to let someone else have extra 15 minutes gaming time. How cute. ❤

Slow but Steady

The first time playing Terraria is a little tough, especially when you don’t know what to do and meet the scary zombies at night! But he didn’t go like, “ARGH! ZOMBIES!” Nope, he just went about moving the character in the same urgency as before, which isn’t very urgent – I was the one crying, “Watch out for that zombie!” but it didn’t faze him!

When his character did lose a life, though, he was just like, “Oops.” 😆

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Part 2: Hanging Out

We spent many days just hanging out (as an introvert, I really go mad if I’m out the whole day every single day 😅), though on some days we went to the shopping malls. And even then I find things about these two kids that I’m in awe about!

As you may or may not know, I’m really sensitive to the cold – so much so that I can’t stand the air conditioning in a shopping mall without a shawl to cover my arms! But we’re always there because it’s crazy hot here at this time of the year. Even at home, we have a tendency to turn on the air conditioning. 😅

Being Nice and Considerate to Others

 

They’re both very nice and considerate to me when I was cold! When I let out a pretty loud sneeze during a super windy day, the younger one rushed off to grab a blanket for me!

When we were in a shopping mall, my fingers tend to get cold and I like holding their hands for warm (and they were pretty warm!). Rather than pulling away, they made a game out of it; the older one would shout “Hand-warmers, activate!” and they’d grab each of my hands. 😆

In fact, I still remember this story from two years ago; it was during my and my husband’s honeymoon, when we went to Thailand with my in-laws. When we entered a huge hypermarket, we grabbed two shopping trolleys and I took one. After some time, my older nephew (who was 9 at the time) pulled the trolley away from me and cried, “Hey, this is your vacation! Let me push the trolley!” And the younger one (6 at the time) was like, “Yeah! We’ll push it!”

Wow. I couldn’t help but to smile. 😀

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It was sad leaving on the day before my vacation ended. I’ll miss these kids. 🙂

Do you know of any children who taught you some life lessons? Do comment below!

~Nicolle ❤

A Short Self-Compassionate Letter

Dear Self,

How nice of you to write such compliments about your nephews! ❤