No Kiddin'

There are those that walk this spinning rock we call "home" that were destined to contribute the continuation of our species. We call those people by different versions of the same words ... "father" and "mother". (Feel free to add in further identifiers like "adopted", "step", "birth", or "in law" as needed.)

There are those, too, that walk this same spinning rock who look at "mother" as she gets out from her Cheerio-strewn mini-van with a back bumper announcing that her child has been on the honor roll at the local pre-school, with her hair up in a half-hearted pony tail that hides a blob of bubblegum she's yet to discover ... observing as she balances the diaper bag, activity bag, book bag, her own purse (which holds only coloring crayons and children's chewable aspirin), binky, and baggie of cheddar-flavored crackers, and begs to hold the sticky hand of a screaming child, their kool-aide stained face contorted in fake agony while "mother" desperately tries to explain that no one gets out from the car unless she's holding their hand. Yes, those people watch this mother and think "I'm going to take a 25 minute shower when I get home and at no time will anyone barge in with a report that they've lost their left shoe or announce, with Fido in tow and while opening the shower door, that 'doggie needs a bath, too'."

Considering the size of the run-on sentence/paragraph above (and offering no apologies for it, as I've read it many times and think it's FABULOUS), it's probably obvious which human I relate most to.

When I'm getting my morning coffee, 98% of the time there will be a version of this parent - not necessarily female - in line in front of me. And because of the way the coffee house is setup, more often than not, I'll witness this parent trying to reason with their small human that breath mints are NOT an appropriate breakfast item. And it is at this exact moment that the divide of "parent" vs. "non-parent" becomes most ... apparent. That "reasoning" thing.

Bluntly stated, if my 3 or 4 or 17 year old child were "demanding" breath mints for breakfast, the very last thing I'd be doing would be trying to reason with them. It seems obvious to me - small human asks for something ridiculous, larger human says "no", end of story. It worked for my upbringing. When did the "reasoning" thing become the norm? And, while I know it's easy for me to quietly giggle as I drive away in my two-seater, non-cereal decorated car, I try to envision how that breath mint thing would have played out in the early 70s, when my sister and I were small.

On Sundays after services, we'd stop by the market at the corner and whomever had behaved best in church - typically NOT me - would be given a dollar. The newly wealthy daughter would then dash into the store, hand the dollar to the cashier and, while the cashier was putting two jelly doughnuts into a paper bag, would pick up a Sunday newspaper. She'd then get the doughnuts and the newspaper and deliver the items to my mother in the front passenger seat of the car. The drive home would take about twelve minutes. Twelve doughnut-drool-inducing minutes. Twelve "I wonder what the funnies are about this week" minutes.

When we got home, we would each WALK to our room, get changed from our church clothes, making sure to hang them up appropriately (and if we knocked our sisters clothes off the hanger, "oops") and then WALK into in the dining room, where the doughnuts would be waiting for us. We would sit at the table and quietly enjoy the treat.

It never occurred to me - honestly - to ask for my doughnut in the car. It never honestly occurred to me to ask for my mom to pass me the funnies so that I could read them on the drive home. That's not how it was done. There was no bargaining ... no haggling necessary. It didn't work that way. We'd get the doughnuts after we'd got changed and we'd get to read the funnies after my parents were done with the newspaper. No one had to explain this to us ... 'tho I guess someone did at SOME point, because we knew the routine. But that whole "reasoning" thing ... that's completely ludicrous. If you have a small human experiencing a melt-down, kneeling to their level and talking about the situation in a calm and rational voice is only serving to make YOU feel better. THEY need to melt down. You can do what ya' want, but they've decided to melt down. They'll move on when they've completed their fit. End of story.

I can prove this, by the way.

We have all, at one point (possibly more) in our lives, experienced sadness. Not necessarily related to the goings-on with rest of the planet ... though yes, there's that kind, too. I'm talking about just waking up one overcast day and, for reasons unknown, feeling a little bit down in the dumps. And over the course of ... however long you'd like to admit - an hour, a few hours, a couple of days ... that feeling passes. You work through it. Sometimes it's as easy as acknowledging "hmm I'm kinda blue today" and other times, perhaps it requires bed rest, junk food, a Three Stooges movie-watching marathon, whatever. But you move through it. No one needs to talk at you and explain "you're just a little down and this will pass. You'll be fine. Altoids are not a meal option so select something else. Perhaps the yogurt would be more to your liking." Honestly, when I've been a little down in the dumps, someone talking AT me to tell me that everything would be alright would probably be sharply glared at - and then promptly tuned out. Why would you think your honor-roll listed child wouldn't do the same? Can you not give them that much credit?

And I'm not saying that one should be cold and distant to the needs of their own small human. Not at all. I'm saying that when the tiny human makes the unreasonable demand, the larger human can just as easily say "I think you misunderstood me. Would you like breakfast?" rather than going into a Dr. Phil-induced sit-down because ... again ... that decision to melt-down will become a decision to move on when the decision-maker chooses and not before.

I've seen these parents, God love 'em, taking little Hannah or young Ethan by the hand and sitting on the bench at the park for a 30-minute psychological review of "what went wrong, what triggered 'the event', and what we can do to prevent such situations in the future" and wonder why it is these same parents are so surprised when, later in life, Hannah and Ethan are easily overwhelmed when things get rough. Seems to me that Hannah and Ethan had parents that were too busy talking and rationalizing at them that they were never shown the healing powers of bed rest, junk food, a Three Stooges movie-marathon ... or even a jelly doughnut.

Alllllllllll that being said, the other kind of parent also baffles me.

As I was leaving the coffee house this very morning, an adorable little child was spinning round and round the lamp post DIRECTLY next to the curb where I was trying pull away. Her parents saw her spinning (and spinning and spinning) and they had to have seen me trying to leave. I rolled down the window closest to the curb and asked if someone could please make sure she wouldn't fall into the street (or under my tires) and you would have thought I was asking for the moon and stars themselves. These parents had heard what I had asked, as they were at that point looking right at my vehicle, but it somehow didn't occur to them that there was any danger whatsoever.

THEIR honor-roll listed small human, however, *did* see the danger. She immediately stopped her spinning, stepped down from the lamppost (which she was doing a terrific job in climbing), waved at me while mouthing the word "sorry", and stepped away from the sidewalk, enabling me to safely pull away.

I hope she gets a jelly doughnut for breakfast tomorrow.