Children can be innocently destructive.

"Oh, no! Look at all the photographs on the floor! Who cut them into small little pieces?" the shout arose from one of the ladies in the house. Her dismay attracted all the other members of the house-hold. They watched in disbelief as the lady squatted and scooped up the cut pieces from the floor. Nearby was a pair of scissors.

"Look! this must be the scissors used to cut up these photos," she turned round to show the others the evidence of the crime.

When she held up the scissors, the elderly man nearby spoke up, "I think it's the work of Seow Lik." He had seen his little grand-daughter with the scissors cutting up what he had thought were pieces of unwanted papers. At that, they helplessly looked in the direction of the little girl's grandpa.

"Oh, my God! Why didn't you stop her? Look at all these spoiled photos. You should have kept an eye on her," one of them cried.

Well, this is a case where the old man did not realise that very young children in their enthusiasm of performing new skills would use practically anything at hand to enjoy. The little girl must have just learned how to use a pair of scissors and finding photographs available for cutting had done just that. To the educationists, it is creativity. So no parent should punish the little girl, for by doing so, there would be more harm than good done. Since it was over, the harm to the adults was completed but that did not mean that the child cannot benefit from the creativity. Anyway, it was not the child's fault.

Yes, definitely no fault of the child. The fault lies with the adults for not understanding their child. As children grow older, they are bound to be curious, active and bent on creativity. If we understand this, then we obviously will keep things not to be used by the children away or out of their reach. Then, those things will be safe.

Whether it will be a lesson or not to the adults again depends upon how the adults take it. If they think it the fault of their children, then the adults have learned no lesson, have no understanding of children and certainly would have faulted the children, perhaps scolded or worse, given them a caning.

Furthermore, parents ought to watch out for their children at this exploratory age as they could also put themselves into all kinds of danger. Parents are the ones who are supposed to be having the knowledge for bringing up the children safely and properly while children in their ignorance are expected to make some mistakes in their learning process.

Therefore we need knowledgeable parents who can guide their children through their early learning years to safer and greater development.