Peter the pedophile made it a point to condemn me to our host, spending most of our time in their country of Ethiopia alone with the man as his mentee, leaving my daughter and I to fend for ourselves penniless, even though the burr is scandalously devalued compared to the dinar and the U.S. dollar. But no matter because we found our way around with the neighborhood children as our companions, making the trip worth all the suffering we endured to be with them.

Our female host accused me of giving my child too much time to play. Though I was shocked I held my tongue as her entire life revolved around a TV misconception of how to mimic an American lifestyle, a land she constantly dreamed of visiting.

I simply recalled for her a walk I took with her daughter to illustrate how what might look like “playing around” could be quite academic. Besides walking and talking for about an hour I learned how she felt about her extremely controlled lifestyle, without having to ask. It was quite unlike how her mother described it.

Along the way, we met new people, observed a construction project, and bought some snacks among other things. It was the first time she had gone for a walk where she lived outside an agenda to just “get in the car”. She was having a ball!

When we got to the counter and I invited her to pay for the things she wanted, she had no idea where to start. She said her mother didn’t want her in the way when they went shopping so she almost hyperventilated at me even suggesting she take charge. She was top in her class in school but translating that into the real world was like asking a duck to show people in the dessert how to paddle.

Then when I was willing to spend as much time as she needed to count the money out without going off on her about time constraints, she stood there staring at me. It was a total game changer. She went home and drew up a graph of the entire experience, including a chart that analyzed various foods prices like she was a statistician on assignment with NASA. It was then that I saw how gifted she truly was. All she needed was the freedom and safety to express what was already inside while being given way too much time to “play”.

While mom was impressed with the result of our little outing, it didn’t translate that I might be at least that invested in my own child’s learning. Since its’ a mother’s right to choose, I maneuvered around the insult leaving her to stew it over, and headed back to active parenting and having fun with my child and her new gang of friends, rescuing a pack of puppies they found in a nearby abandoned building.

I’m Adelaide. Thanks for reading.

P.S. Let’s be the media our children learn from. Screen shot success & share #CoWkSavesAChild.

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