Advice

This has happened to me in many instances. People always have their opinions on everything and on everyone. Sometimes they tend to give advice which they have never tried or followed in life. I wanted to share this story after this particular incident happened to me.

I was waiting at a railway station and nearby me was a family. They were complete strangers to me and they had a young boy at the age of around 10 years. The boy was persistently pestering his father about the time of arrival of the train. Every time the boy asked, his father replied patiently that the train will arrive in 5 minutes.

After some time he got tired and probably felt thirsty constantly talking. So he stood up and took a cold bottle of sprite. After taking some gulps of it, he shared it with his wife. While she was drinking the boy starting pulling his mom's saree saying that he also wanted it. But his father strictly said that he will catch cold. Hearing this, the boy started questioning how they can drink it and they won't catch cold. Whatever reason the parents told, the boy was not ready to hear it and was fixated in drinking the cold drink. At last he grabbed the drink from his mom and tried to drink it fast. But his father pulled the bottle from his hand and gave him a slap. The boy started crying while his mom tried to console him and they boarded in to the train that way. I remembered a childhood story on seeing this incident.

Once upon a time, there was a boy in a village who ate a lot of sweets. His parents tried to keep him away from sweets and all their efforts went in vain. So they decided to take him to wise Yogi in the village.

He heard the case and asked the parents to come see him after 2 weeks. When they came back, the yogi told a made up story that the sweets forms tooth demons and all his tooth will die. The boy got scared hearing this and stopped eating sweets. The parents were so happy on this progress and they went to thank the Yogi. They also asked why he didn't advice the boy immediately on the day they brought him. The Yogi explained that he was also fond of eating sweets and he stopped eating them for 2 weeks to know if that was possible. The moral of the story is that even to advice a kid the Yogi first tried to practice it with himself and only after knowing it was possible he advice the kid.

So to summarize if the family didn't want the boy to drink the cold drink, they shouldn't have consumed it in front of the boy in the first place. Please advice others only based on your experience and not on some assumption.