Note: I openly acknowledge my contribution to the decline of the grammatically correct in America :)
A strange thing happens when there is a room full of parents and children gathered together – play group, family party, park, playland, you name it.
Every parent steps up the disciplinary code a bit. Regrettably including myself. Apologizing, correcting and worrying about every mis-step their child makes. Its not that we are necessarily concerned that our little Billy accidentally knocked your little Suzy down. It was of course an accident. It’s more that we are concerned that you might be concerned that our little Billy knocked your little Suzy down, and that you might misinterpret that as an assault on your child by mine, or as a missed opportunity for correction and disciplinary action – no wonder my child’s so wild! In short- we’re all afraid to step on the others toes, and no ones wanting to be the bad parent who’s let their child run amuck.
There are all of the regular parenting statements made in our singsong voices: “let’s play soft”, “oh, be careful”. “use your inside voice”, “let’s not wrestle - someone might get hurt”, “remember we’ve got to share”, “use your words”, “can you tell her you’re sorry”. “remember, you guys are buddies”, “say thank you”, “do we need to go to time out?”, “ok, I’m going to count to 3 – ONE . . . . TWOOOOOOOOOOOO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ok, if I get to 3, we’re really leaving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THHHHHRRRRRREEEEEEEEE!”
So often we get caught up in the management of their behavior rather than the enjoyment of it. Sure there are some “naughty” behaviors easier to enjoy than others. It’s easy for me (most of the time0 to take a step back and enjoy the fact that my kids have poured cinnamon in the dishwasher as soap, or poured prune juice over the steaming broccoli while they help me make dinner, or even when one tries to take a stage dive off of the end of the pew right in the middle of church. It’s harder me to deal with their aggression, defiance, and their apparent lack of self-control.
But I have to remember—The last thing kids are is civilized. Wouldn’t that be weird if children behaved exactly as we would have them? Walked around with perfect manners and behavior? Yet I still take my sons 4-year-old behavior and project it through his teen-age years and I end up with a scary looking future. Somehow in this future reality he hasn’t learned not to hit, and his stick swords have turned into real ones, and he still hasn’t learned to share . . . the mommy mind goes absolutely ballistic on me some times.
I read something the other night:
“Listen my son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.
These are the things I have been thinking son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with the towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called our angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. Your spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Good-bye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply “Hold your shoulders back!”
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stocking were expensive- and you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in, timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your hear and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped form my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding- this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me goodnight. Nothing else matters tonight son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were ritual: “He is nothing but a boy – a little boy”.
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.”
- “Father Forgets”, W. Livingston Larned
For me it might be my broken rear view mirror, muffin crumbs in the couch, changing the sheets yet again, or hitting his sister for 10th time today – but he is nothing but a boy – a little boy. I have to remember that.