Few parents escape their kids' childhoods with all their valuables intact. If you're lucky, the kids never find the items you hold most dear. One dad, it seems, was not so lucky with his passport. The father of a 4-year-old has made news recently after South Korean officials allegedly took one look at his passport covered in toddler doodling and told him he would not be allowed to leave the country with his family to go home.
According to the story making the rounds of the Internet, the Dad posted on the Chinese Twitter, Weibo, asking for help after officials said they wouldn't accept his photo with the extra facial hair, bigger eyes, and huge lips added in felt tip pen by the man's toddler. Looks like somebody should have invested in those "marks only one kind of paper" markers!
The now viral photo of the Chinese father's passport is being debated by folks who say it may be a hoax, but it's the kind that makes you groan in solidarity regardless, because we've all been there, we could all see it happening.
We've all walked in to find the kids with a marker or pen in hand, going to town, making us a "picture" on something that we really, really needed!
If we're lucky, we walk in just at the beginning of the drawing.
Most of us are not that lucky.
Which is why -- when it happens -- as much as we want to get angry with our tots, we really need to remind ourselves that kids are kids, and kids don't have the ability to think through what they're doing ... not when they're toddlers anyway. The messes they make are as much our fault for not thinking through leaving a legal document and a marker in toddler reach as they are anything.
Then we need to remind ourselves not to make the same mistake again ... because we do have the ability to think ahead, even if our kids can't!
If this is real, good luck to this Dad ... he's going to need it!
Has your toddler ever destroyed something vitally important? What happened?
Images via J Aaron Farr/Flickr; Weibo