Reaching Further than your Grasp

Once when my daughter was six and my son was two, my mother-in-law noticed my daughter holding a favorite toy just out of my son’s standing reach, and she gently scolded her for teasing him that way. My daughter was quick to respond that she was simply doing what she had seen my son’s physical therapist do with him. My son had some developmental delays that kept him from being able to jump, and this was one of the exercises that the therapist did to develop the right muscles and to teach him to go up on his toes and, eventually, to jump. What looked like teasing to my mother-in-law was…