A Practical Guide to Raising Parents: As Told by Grandpa Ferris

By Robert Ferris

A Practical Guide to Raising Parents is an accumulation of short stories, written from the childs perspective with a lesson summary at the end. Both the child and the parent will enjoy reading these stories based on life, love, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546238041

Robert Ferris

Robert Ferris has been a Montessori Kindergarten Teacher for the past 20 years. He and his wife, Lyndsay, run a private school, Skills Learning Center where they support and promote the Montessori Methods of independence, creative thinking, a strong understanding of ethics and a love of learning. Through his interaction with children, Robert has written several childrens stories in order to capture the beauty and simplicity that children have to offer as well as the important lessons parents and educators can draw from these experiences.

Book preview

The Three Cookies

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Charlie and Emma rose early in the morning, hoping the smells of breakfast would soon fill the air. Their mother was still busy at work in the bedroom, and they could hear sheets being unruffled along with pillows popping, as she fluffed them back up with air. Emma knew that her mother would still be awhile, for after first making up her own bed, her attention would turn to Charlie’s smaller bed. Emma and Charlie followed each other’s footsteps, one behind the other, making the sounds of STOMP, STOMP, CLIPPETY, CLOMP, and with the last sound Emma’s foot abruptly met the bottom of the kitchen door. Swoosh! The door suddenly opened, causing the curls around her face to dance and twirl. ‘Hmmm’, she thought, ‘so this is how royalty enters the room.’

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Because of this grandiose entrance, she would be the first to discover the crooked lid that sat atop the half-opened cookie jar. She remembered the night before receiving such a cookie because she had finished her supper and a cookie had been the reward. ‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if there would be just one more of those scrumptious cookies still left somewhere at the bottom of that jar?’

Emma glanced back at Charlie as he wandered about the room, bumping first into a table leg and then turning and thumping into a chair. He was still wondering how he could exactly get from the floor to way up into his high chair. He was unaware of an open invitation to share that last cookie. Emma’s eyes rolled about her head as she looked for a reason not to approach the opened cookie jar that was breathing out it’s welcoming scent.

She scrambled on top of a tilted chair while balancing with one knee against her chest, and the other helping to support the chair. She reached her hand up tilting the jar towards her as her eyes tumbled down into the abyss of a dusty tomb. Much to her surprise, rather than finding a single cookie, she felt three chocolate chip cookies hidden amongst a sea of crumbs. ‘Hmmm, she thought, there are three cookies and two children, how will I share them?’ She eagerly pushed her hand in searching for the largest cookie first. Then she would find whatever was left over to share with her brother.

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The first cookie that she pulled from the jar was almost perfect in shape, but Charlie’s cookie had a chunk that seemed to be missing, as if it was still hiding somewhere in the cookie jar. Charlie hadn’t noticed because a cookie was a cookie, no matter how small it was. His view of the treasure was not the same as Emma’s. As far as he was concerned, everything was fair.

Here Charlie, Emma spoke ever so softly so no one else would hear. With one cookie already in her mouth and the other hand on the cookie jar, she offered Charlie his broken piece of a cookie while keeping herself steady, balancing on the dining room chair. His hands grasped it so suddenly that it first crumbled against his shirt and then scattered across the floor in a sea of crumbs.

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Those two cookies disappeared so quickly that even before Charlie’s crumbs had fallen to the floor, Emma had shoved her hand back into the cookie jar in search of the last one. At first, she took the cookie for herself, but just before she bit into it, she noticed her brother and his desperate look, as he remembered how the last cookie had disappeared before him. Emma broke off a small corner of the last cookie and handed it to Charlie saying, You mustn’t spoil your breakfast by eating too many of these then. Charlie’s