Every morning when my daughters get out of bed they go down to the living room to start off the day with their daily dose of Curious George. Then I receive my first order of the day from both of them, one generally taking the cue from whoever remembers first, "Dad, I want chocolate milk!" This order is rarely responded to promptly -at times because I'm still in bed or at other times because I simply have higher priorities than supplying my daughter's routine fix of chocolate milk-but however much time I take I can be assured that the order will be repeated louder and louder and more frequently the more I allow time to lapse from the initial request.
About a year ago I noticed that when I asked our oldest daugther to do something she suddenly started responding with "Just a minute". Of course, what this really meant was, "Forget about it dad, I'm not going to do it." Mostly I assume because after a minute passes in a 4 year old's world any lingering memory of a parent's request disappeared 59 seconds ago. My natural reaction to this was, "No, not in a minute, right now!" It was only after a few times that this process was repeated before it even struck me where her seemingly novel idea of putting me off with 'just a minute' was coming from-me. I often told her 'just a minute' when I was putting off her requests such as those for the chocolate milke and sadly, just as she did, at times I allowed enough time to pass that I completely forget to get around to responding to what she requested.
It has since occurred to me how often our hypocrisy as parents is manifest. To some extent such hypocrisy is necessary. Certainly there are priorities as an adult that I understand pre-empt chocolate milk and requests I make of my children that demand immediate attention-if for no other reason than they won't remember to do it later. But there are many times where I've realized I've been hypocritical unecessarily. I have, for example, often disallowed my daugther from eating snacks or dessert before a meal but I realize how frequently I sneak a cookie or other dessert before dinner. We are trying to give them a good start in life with establishing good habits(and yes, we're working on kicking the chocolate milk habit as well) perhaps at the recognition we've failed to establish those habits ourselves.
It makes me realize that we are in many ways closer to being big kids rather than adults than we like to think. Certainly we have a much more complex array of emotions we are dealing with and are processing a larger amount of information but we still find ourselves in a battle with our instincts. If we as adults lose that battle so frequently how surprised should we be that our children, with far less comprehension and experience, lose those battles as well? If nothing else, it can certainly instill us with a degree of patience. So at times when I find myself overly frustrated at my kids for fighting or sneaking desserts I've told them to stay away from I remind myself that I'm still figuring out how to get myself to go a week without buying junk from the vending machine.
Awesome post...and I especially apprciate it this week, as I am tending 2 grandsons, and I can totally relate to wanting a cookie ot dessert before dinner, but not wanting to let my grandkids have it. Oh, this was powerful. Parenting is such an incredible challenge.
ReplyDeleteHaha, this is so true. I can't count how many times have I scarfed down cookies for breakfast.
ReplyDeleteOnce I complained about my son losing his third coat, for the third winter in a row and was basically bawling him out about how he needs to learn to keep track of stuff. My mother, who was present, just looked at me and said, "Be patient, Honey...Oh, and have you found your keys yet?"