How to Turn a Bad Choice into a Learning Experience

We are very lucky.  We have family nearby who are willing to watch our daughter, Beth, for us while we work full-time.  We are both educators, working in the same large public high school. My husband teaches classes and I am one of the librarians.

Today, my aunt brought Beth for a visit at the school around lunch time.  They came to visit me first, then Beth wanted to see Daddy.  We walked down to his room and said hi for a minute (high school girls love seeing 4-year-olds!).  We then returned to the library and told Beth it was time for her to leave and go to lunch.  She is having a hard time with our return to work after the two week Holiday Break.  She repeatedly ran back to me to say goodbye.  The first two times I tried to redirect her by giving her an important job to do (text me a picture of her lunch).  The third time I had to be firm and tell her it was time for Mommy to go back to work.  They successfully left.

It wasn't until the end of the day that I learned that after leaving the library, Beth broke away from my aunt and ran all the way through the very large school (nearly 4,000 students), through the cafeteria crowded with high school students, and returned triumphantly to my husband's classroom.  She was very excited that she found the way.  She ran so fast, my aunt couldn't keep up and quickly lost her in the maze of halls.  Luckily, Beth remembered the way to Daddy's classroom, and he was able to walk her back to my, now panicked, aunt.

The dilemma: how to reprimand her for the bad behavior, but compliment her memory?  We explained that we were proud of her for finding Daddy's classroom, but that she made a choice when she ran away, and that it was not a good choice to make.  We asked if she understood the choice that she made, and she confirmed that she chose not to stay with my aunt.  We asked her what might have been a better choice, and she replied, "to stay with Aunt".

Beth is extremely sensitive and thoughtful.  If we had simply berated her for running away, she would have broken down.  We strive to always turn mistakes into learning experiences.  She is smart enough, even at four, to comprehend.