Little knowledge is dangerous indeed. This line comes from a poem entitled ‘An essay on criticism‘ written in the 18th century by Alexander Pope. He expresses it as ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’. I pondered on the meaning after going through it myself: superficial knowledge is worse than ignorance! When you know you don’t know you will make effort to find things out, but when you think you know, well…..
So one day I decided to try a new recipe. After going through my supplies in the house, I saw that I had to go and buy one key ingredient. I went through two shops but didn’t find it. I then decided to order online, and it cost me much more than I would have wanted to pay 😒. Because I had wasted time running around, when I got my delivery I went straight into my adventure. Big mistake!
Once I put in the ingredient, certain irreversible chemical reactions started happening😲! It was all over in a few seconds, there was precious little I could do to save my recipe. Then I thought, wait a minute, what just happened here? I went back to the actual recipe and realized my error. Little knowledge is dangerous! I had read the recipe once and thought I understood it well, and that proved costly. The warning was right there, if I had taken just 2 min to read again I would have been wiser. Expensive lesson learnt: when you think you know, check again lol!
Our kids often use the same line when you are trying to teach them something, ‘I know that!’ Sometimes it’s cute, but sometimes downright annoying. Going through the story you will find they don’t know as much as they thought they do.
This is not only said in learning book knowledge, but also in their life experiences. Have you ever tried to deal with a toddler who ‘knows’ how to dress themselves? Even on the choice of clothes to wear? My 23-month old has joined the bandwagon on this. It used to bother us but now we let him be, as long as we are in the house! Whatever he wears, even his siblings’ clothes is ok. He is also at that age where he can wear people’s underwear on his head 😂, we put that away after a good laugh.
Dealing with children often exposes how little I know. Of course noone can exhaust all knowledge but we can all learn a little more than we knew yesterday. And that is growth. ‘In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.’ Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable, search for knowledge and enjoy the experience with your children!
Love this!