Stop Me if You’ve Heard this One

Sparks and smoke billow unabashedly from a dozen places in a 18-ton machine covering 4000 square feet of a factory floor. Gears whine pointlessly as 30 men stand uselessly at their positions along the unmoving conveyor belt. Dozens of trucks are lined up outside, filled with raw materials to be processed by the broken behemoth; dozens more truck wait empty for product that is not being produced.

The boss is distraught. Overhead is killing him; screaming emails, faxes, and phone calls flood in from frantic retail distributors. “My order was supposed to be here three days ago!” “I’m going to take my business elsewhere!” “You promised that your machine would be fixed yesterday!” Meanwhile payroll continues to accrue as crews of experts, the best engineers in the city, fail to get the machine running.

Finally, just as all hope is fading, just as the boss envisions bankruptcy and disgrace, an elderly, wizened man appears on the factory floor. Wiping his dirty hands on his greasy overalls, he stands surveying the havoc. The elderly man looks at the smoke, flame, and sparks; he considers the 30 men standing idly by at their stations by the conveyor belt; he listens to the grinding of the gears. Slowly, he ambles forward toward the massive machine. Approaching a gear box, he opens the panel and takes a Philips Head screw driver from the belt around his hip.

He inserts the screwdriver into one of the screws in the gear box and twists the screw one-quarter turn.

As if by magic, the flames and sparks instantly disappear. The whining gears are immediately silenced as the conveyor belt smoothly begins to run. The workers shout with joy as products are finished and loaded onto the waiting trucks. Within seconds, the factory is once again a productive, profitable place.

The elderly man ambles upstairs to the office of the boss and hands him a grimy piece of paper on which the following words are scrawled in uneven letters:

Bill for services………………………………………$10,000

The boss is apoplectic. Sputtering with rage, he gesticulates wildly and screams at the elderly man. “Ten thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars! This is an outrage! You only worked for two minutes. You can’t charge me ten thousand dollars for turning one lousy, little screw.”

“I only charged you five dollars for turning the screw,” replies the elderly man.

Even angrier now and confused as well, the boss screams, “What are you talking about? This bill is for ten thousand dollars, not five dollars! What is the other nine thousand something dollars about?”

“Ah,” says the elderly man with a nod. “The other nine thousand dollars? THAT was for knowing which screw to turn.”

***

What can loving parents learn from the elderly man with the greasy overalls and the screw driver? Sometimes it’s okay for our kids to struggle the least little bit before giving them the answer. “Wait for the question” the Buddha teaches us. A child who is making her own way and discovers for herself that she is stuck on a math problem will be receptive to help. A child who has watched her parents take responsibility for her learning less so.

If getting the homework done has become an unmitigated nightmare in your home replete with flames and sparks shooting out of the machine that should be your well-oiled and smoothly operating family, it might be time to take a step back. Allowing your child to take charge of her own process might just be equivalent to giving that screw a one-quarter turn.