The Day My Four Year Old Outsmarted My Anger | by Nilisha | Aug, 2025

Sometimes it takes a child’s simple words to remind you what love truly looks like.

It was either yesterday or the day before. I can’t quite remember. Funny how small moments can blur, yet the feelings they leave behind stay so vivid.

It was an ordinary afternoon. My younger one was napping and my older daughter was buzzing with her usual energy. Somewhere between telling her to finish something and her deciding she had more interesting things to do, I lost my patience.

“I’m not going to talk to you,” I told her, my voice firm. “You don’t listen to me.”

She stood still for a second, eyes big and round, and then said softly, “You don’t love me.”

I shook my head. “No,” I replied, trying to hold my ground.

She didn’t argue or cry. Instead, she paused, as if arranging her thoughts, and spoke in the calmest little voice:
“But you help me with so many things. You help me with my lunch, you play with me, you help me with my studies.”

It was such a simple statement but in that moment my anger dissolved. A smile broke through before I could stop it. Here she was, just four years old, yet already knowing how to put together the right words at the right time. Not to manipulate, but with the kind of innocent wisdom only children have.

I realised then that she had been listening all along. Not just to my words, but to my actions. The love I show her every day in the small, ordinary moments had been quietly teaching her what love really is.

Motherhood is full of moments like this. You think you are the one teaching, guiding, and shaping their little world. But then your child says something so simple and so pure, it makes you pause and reflect. Sometimes they don’t just grow under our care — they help us grow too.