The KISS Rule – Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Our yet-to-be-three years old educated us yesterday.

As a part of his latest and most prized acquisition, Band in a Box, he has received a kazoo, which he has been “playing” with aplomb. Nobody taught him how to “play” the instrument, it was simply learn-as-you-play sort of thing. This has been to the amazement of adults in the house, who had been grappling with the instrument with visible signs of no-breakthrough bordering on frustration, each single-mindedly trying to crack the code by blowing into it with fervent enthusiasm. We even sought tutorials from him adding to his bewilderment with our inability to do something seemingly so simple.

As always, we decided to bring in technology to crack technology. My husband Googled the instrument to learn how to play it. What became apparent was that we were prisoners of our habit of blowing into wind instruments and couldn’t imagine there could be another way of making it sound – something as simple as humming/talking into it. As adults we try to do things in different ways when one way doesn’t work but still latch on so loyally to the one way that we believe, largely by force of habit, to be the right one. Children on the other have no such loyalty, therefore, find it easier to try out different ways with equal sincerity enabling them to succeed where adults often fail. That makes them persevere with unbelievable tenacity, sometimes misunderstood as stubbornness, while adults give in to their self-imposed limitations. 

Therefore, adults do fail, while the little ones know no such word !!