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Handle with Care – But Have a Little Faith

Our kids may seem fragile to us, but they’re stronger and more capable than we sometimes give them credit for. Here, how to foster confidence and self-esteem in children with attention deficit.

On the surface, they are just eggs — four little eggs in a basket. A basket with four eggs carried by an enthusiastic young boy who had been asked by one of the women at Coggeshall Farm, Rhode Island’s only living history farm, to collect them and bring them back to the house.

He took the basket, collected the eggs, walked 30 yards through the mud, and brought them into the eighteenth-century house that still functions and runs as it would have back then.

He placed the basket on the table, gently. All eggs were intact. He beamed with pride, and I joined him.

Then the woman brought out a delicate ceramic bowl and set it on the table. She asked him to place the eggs in the bowl, and I held my breath.

She didn’t know he has ADHD. She had no way of discerning that his fine motor skills had been compromised during his bouts with epilepsy, seizures, and the side effects of potent medicine.

Or maybe she did, which is why she asked him. She had faith in him.

Perhaps that is why he rose to the occasion.