Innovation by SIT

A big part of my life over the past three years has been dedicated to my role as an aunt. I can proudly say that after gaining hours and hours of “Rani (my nephew’s name) time,” I am a certified (some would say “certifiable”) aunt.

I do enjoy spending time with my nephew, but the little fella sure knows how to keep me, and mostly his parents, on our toes.

I want to share with you an incident that I am sure all of you who have kids, are related to kids or watched over kids, are familiar with. Bear with me through the description of the incident because, at the end, I would love to hear about your experiences as well.

During a game at a play date last week, Rani banged his head against a window and started crying. You know, that type of crying that makes even the iciest of hearts melt. I ran to him, breaking the 2.5-meter world record, took him in my arms, and rocked him against me while murmuring the most ridiculously ineffective things such as “shush now, don’t cry, the pain will go away soon” or futilely getting him to look at the new crayons on the table. While his sobbing continued as strongly, I was thinking to myself that I have to do better – and different – if I want this to work - which led me to the SIT inventive problem solving approach.

I reminded myself that one of the characteristics of inventive problem solving is that the problem is the solution. This led me to the realization that my salvation will not come from bizarre traditional sentences such as “the pain will go away by your wedding day” or external resources like the crayons on the table. Rather, I need to focus my attention on my crying nephew in order to come up with an inventive solution.

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