If you give a kid a french fry...

Last night, we decided go to Burger King.  To put this into context, Burger King is new to our city and one of the limited American food options. Going to BK is a treat for our family.

After we got settled, Philip took Emma back up to the counter to get something. While they were away, there was a group of children (that were not customers eating at the restaurant) that came over to say hi to Bella and began sharing their local snacks with her. Strangers (or new friends as we like to call them) are always sharing food and treats with Bella.

Being a mother, I have recently began to worry (its in the job description) that Bella is going to grow up with expectations of people giving her things. As much as possible, I want to foster in her a heart of gratefulness. I want her to understand that some of the people who have been kind enough to share with her aren't sharing out of excess but rather they are sacrificing to show her kindness. While so far Bella is a great sharer, I also really want to encourage that spirit of giving in her. That can be a very difficult thing to do in a culture where your children are given special treatment for being a foreigner.

I know thats a lot of deep thinking for the topic of sharing food! The point here is that I have really been encouraging Bella to share her treats with new friends. I asked Bella if she wanted to share a french fry with the girl who had just shared an identifiable piece of dried fruit (maybe a prune) with her. Bella smiled and held out one of her french fries to the little girl.

 I was pleased that Bella decided to share. I could tell the other kids also wanted one, so I gave them each a french fry and thought that would be the end of things......Oh boy was I wrong! The children jumped into our booth and began helping themselves to the food on our tray! :) I could tell the the situation was quickly slipping away from me. I couldn't think of how to tell them to stop in Chinese. Not because I didn't know the vocab but partly because I was still processing what was happening and partly because I didn't know the right way to say it culturally.

A couple minutes later, Philip returned to see our booth  (and the top of our table) filled with a group of children finishing up the last few bites of our food. "What is going on!?" he asked me. "I really don't know, but I think we are going to need more food....."

We laughed a lot about what happened. It was certainly not the night we expected. I guess when praying for my child to have a generous heart, I need to be ready to share my fries too.