Using what you’ve got

My mother had a talent that few possess today. She could find a meal — a delicious meal — in anyone’s kitchen. This included the kitchen’s of owners who proclaimed, “There’s nothing to eat for dinner.”  This trait is termed resourcefulness and probably extended to other areas of her life. She certainly used it as a New York City school teacher with limited resources. Sorta like Maria in The Sound of Music without the use of curtain fabric for clothing. Children with special needs do this everyday, all day. Without all the requisite skills for a task, these children figure out how to get the job done. As adults watching them struggle, we need to suppress the urge to reach out and help. Learning by doing. Learning by failing. Learning through experience. Now that’s learning. The end product may not be conventional but we’ve learned something, probably a lot more, along the way. And it’s so much sweeter.