No big point ... just - praising the ordinary?

Maybe it's just me.

A building in NYC caught fire, and a woman inside the building saved four of her children and almost died with the fifth, whom she apparently refused to leave behind. (They were both saved by the FDNY in the end.)

The Times says:

[The husband] praised his wife's bravery. "Every mother has the same nature," he said. "They save their babies first. They don't care about their lives."

Praise? Yes, okay. Even if the implication is that she couldn't help it, which makes it not so much bravery as instinct. But praise of his wife's bravery?

No. Either it's not praise at all, or it's praise of mothers' bravery, all mothers. (Which, by the way, is what I'm sure he meant - something like "Only a mother would do something that brave; the rest of us would get out of a burning building so fast...")

No huge point here; just that the Times might watch its verbs.