I agree with Cathy in that we should respond to children differently than to adults. Our response to a child should be instructive. We need to ensure that the child understands why the drink was spilt, how to prevent it in the future, and how to properly respond to the situation (cleaning up the mess). What is often lacking is the respectful tone that we use with other adults.
The difficulty in responding to GT kids is that you are never quite certain of the mental age of the child at any given moment since it can fluctuate by about a decade in the span of two minutes.
