My son has turned 4, but I'm increasingly impatient with him, believing he is too slow in almost everything. However, sometimes I do wonder, what's the hurry?

One morning, it was already 8 o'clock but my son was still fondling a toy car, while I waited for him to brush his teeth before rushing off to the kindergarten.

"Hurry up! You are already late!" I couldn't help raising my voice.

The boy reluctantly accepted my tooth brushing orders, but spent more than one minute putting on his sandals. "You are just like the ent-child in Lord of the Rings," I joked.

Actually, J. R. R. Tolkien only talked about ent, a slow-moving tree that takes care of the forest.

Jack Peterson made a funny, vivid portrayal of Treebeard the ent in his movie. But I'm more impressed by Tolkien's description of the ent-wives, who have left the ents to take care of their flower gardens.

When Treebeard said farewell to Merry and Pippin, he asked the hobbits to keep an eye on the ent-wives and the ent-chidren. Well, it seems one of the ent-children lives in my home.

My son enjoys the idea of ent-children very much, and we talk and move in ent fashion all the way to school. "Goooood-bye!" I waved at him. For the first time in many weeks, I didn't find myself enraged for his slowness.

It's interesting to realize that while my son was a toddler, we always said: "Slower! Be careful!"

We were afraid to let him explore the surroundings by himself, lest harm would befall the innocent child.