Peace begins in the hearts of 4-year-olds

I received this beautiful story through a positive discipline e-mail list today. It's written by the nanny of a 4 year-old & her younger brother (I'm not sure of his exact age.)

I wanted to share an event that just happened today.  We have been  worried about the fighting between Isla and Tate for awhile. 

Lately it has  been both hitting each other.  Needless to say, we were trying our best to figure out a good way to resolve the issue.  We would ask Isla what else we could do, what would be the best way to tell Tate something, and so on.  With Tate we  would ask him to show us how he can be gentle and to use his words.  After almost a year of them hitting each other today we had a HUGE breakthrough!!

  

Isla was playing with her baby doll and Tate's truck. Tate continued  to pull her doll out of the truck.  Isla said very politely,

 "Tate please stop  that, I don't like that."  Which I was very happy about, but then while  Isla had her back to him, he hit her (very hard on the back).  She was about to cry, and also appeared to be getting angry.  Now this where the most amazing thing happened.  She turned around and asked Tate if he would like a hug.  A HUG ~ !!  Tate took the hug and then turned away and  played with

something else.  THIS WAS AMAZING ~ !!  It feels so  wonderful to see how Isla has grown so much and was able to stop herself and  handle herself so very well. 

I was shocked. I then said to Isla that it seemed like a  wonderful idea to give Tate a hug, that he seemed to just have wanted her  attention.  Isla then said, "Yeah, Tate wanted me to play with him, but I  was doing something else, so I gave him a hug and now he can play by himself."  AMAZING ~ !!