My kids all get along so well. Usually.
OK, sometimes. Often in
public. Well, enough that people longingly tell me about this feat of harmony, and enough that I feel like I pull it off - sometimes. But in truth I don’t know anyone who can
live with anyone else, especially anyone else that they didn’t even choose to
live with, 24/7 for 18 years and always be unfailingly polite, kindhearted,
generous and enjoyably refined company. But I do know that we expect that of our kids.
And that’s not even close to the end of where the
expectations that we hold for ourselves massively diverge from those that we
hold for our kids. Here is one... trying lots of
foods. Believe me, when I go to a restaurant if
there is a gross sauce on my plate or, god forbid, a mushroom, I am so not thrilled about it. I may appear happy and
cheerful when I return the plate to sender but I am not ever eating a
mushroom. Sorry - they taste like dirt to me. My kids, though, they need to try
things. Lots of things! Even things that I personally detest the very idea of and wouldn't try. And in spite of that ol’ “you don’t know if
you don’t try it” thing, there are things that I promise I know without trying. And I bet they do too - but I don't really trust them to know that yet.
Here’s another thing.
Being a grumpy, hangry pain in the ass in the morning. For adults it’s just fine because we need our
coffee and stuff to be right in the brain.
But a grumpy kid at most any time of day or night is completely
unacceptable. “We do not behave that
way”. “You can sit in your room until
you can cheer up”. “You will not start
the day like this”. Just a few choice phrases that reflect our
impatience for things that we forgive in ourselves possibly more than a dozen
times a day.
I can’t stand it when my kids make a mess of stuff. Like they spill something or they get flour
all over the kitchen when making cookies.
It irritates me to death that they keep their clothes piled up and not
neatly stacked away. For those who do
their own laundry, the fact that they run out of clean shirts makes my skin
crawl with annoyance. One of my own
offspring incessantly singing a song over and over is enough to make me get the
moustache duct tape from the drawer and apply it liberally to their mouths. But the thing is that I do every single one
of those things. Every. One.
You know and I know that my annoyance at someone forgetting
to lock a dog cage or not closing a cereal bag completely has no bearing on
mine or my kids ability to make those things happen in the future. We are fallible and imperfect beings who may at times be unfocused on the minutia of a cereal bag. The patience to accept in another person
that which you can’t accept in yourself, well, that may just be the pinnacle of
enlightenment – the pinnacle that we can for sure envision but not really ever
reach.
Sorry, y'all. Siblings are gonna bicker. Drinks are gonna spill. Clothes are gonna pile up to the sky until
you really need them and then they are gonna all be dirty. The morning will be a grumpy time. These things are promises, not threats or
worries, not even things that you can carefully architect away, they are indelible truths. For
us and for our kids. So how can we be as
tolerant of these human flaws in our children as we are in ourselves?
I’m still too annoyed by my daughter’s breakfast cereal spill to think about it right now but I suspect that sometime today I will figure it out - hopefully before anyone gets frustrated with homework because I can't stand that.
I’m still too annoyed by my daughter’s breakfast cereal spill to think about it right now but I suspect that sometime today I will figure it out - hopefully before anyone gets frustrated with homework because I can't stand that.