I recently had coffee with a Buddhist friend and her very energetic young daughter. While the girl was playing around, she banged her her elbow against a table and started crying. In my family, to console a child, we would have playfully hit the table back and said "bad table". However in the exact same situation, my very wise friend took her child back to table where the little girl said "Sorry table, I hope I didn't hurt you. I promise to be more careful next time".