My 7 1/2 year old told me last night, after I'd begged her to stop Rainbow Looming and do her 30 minutes of reading and put in two cents on her project about Helen Keller, that I was unfair. Her exact words were shouted, "You are unfair, Mommy! Other moms are more fair than you!" To which I responded, without raising my voice, "Then go and check them out. See if you want to live with one of them. Because I can assure you that when you are over at their place for a play date they are giving you the fun, cool mommy. But I bet their own kids will tell you that they are just as unfair and uncool as Mommy. Now get to reading." She stormed out of the room and kicked around a bit in her own bedroom before coming back to her senses and picked up her book to read. She came to me and asked that I sit with her while she read to which I immediately obliged.
After we'd read and I was braiding her hair for bedtime, I told her that I'd been very hurt by her comments earlier and that while I did not like having to be a nag, it was my job to make sure that everyone in the family, little kids and Papa, were taking care of their responsibilities. I told her to imagine just how exhausting it was when no one listened to me but everyone yelled at me. I didn't have to say much else as she started crying and apologizing. While reassuring her that it was not my intention to have her cry but to consider how it must feel to have someone say cruel things, I also wanted her to understand that we would not communicate with each other in the house with outbursts and hurtful statements. The three of us, Lily and Virginie and myself, reviewed better ways to tell someone how you feel. Ways that did not involve shouting, pouting, and throwing tantrums.
I know this scenario plays out in so many households daily, maybe even hourly. And I have to think that the person who can change this kind of communication at my house is yours truly. When I was growing up, there wouldn't be much conversation about it, and when I say wouldn't be much, I mean ANY. My parents, like most others at that time, told us what to do and we did it. Often, "because I said so," was answer enough. I do go to that one from time to time, but I prefer to explain my actions; it's a personal choice. If I don't offer the answer "just because" when they ask a question about nature or math or art, I don't want to give that answer in regards to social situations and personal behavior.
"It's not fair!" means that I am asking them to do something that they not only don't want to do but are actually put out being asked. Or told to do it. We can argue, and we do, or I can tell them why I have asked, in this case, for Lily to do her homework. I can tell her about responsibility and expectations and her role and mine. She is welcome to tell me that she is tired or frustrated or disinterested or angry or sad, but she cannot just tell me that I am being unfair. My parents used to say, "Life is unfair." That's true. I have thrown that in there too and for good measure have even given examples. Rarely do those examples involve a first-world child with everything in front of her, coming home from a play date, eating her favorite foods, and snuggling in a blanket while she Rainbow looms. I guess this is my "kids in China/Africa/somewhere would love to eat your broccoli" argument.
When mine tell me, "that's not fair," I want to show them as delicately as I can when I am "Cool Mommy" and as snarky as I might when I am "Overworked/Put upon Mommy" that "that's not fair" often comes out of sounding like they believe themselves to be the most important persons in the whole wide world. From believing not that the sun rises and sets in them but that they are, in fact, the sun. I can imagine that letting them believe they are not the most important people in the world might go over badly with some parents. I imagine this because I see adults asking permission of their children for just about any decision they need to make. Mine ARE the most important people to ME and to my husband. But they are not the center of the universe. It would be awfully painful for them to discover this fact outside of the house when they were too old to still believe so. My grandma, Jessie Mae used to tell hers, "I'm always going to love you. It is my job to get others to like you." In other words, she taught her children, my father included, how to be good, kind, decent human beings, and not to think of themselves before everyone else.
Of course I do not want my children to be put upon or feel less than in anyone's eyes, and they have been fortified with feelings of adequacy and sprinklings of how special and important they are, have been celebrated for jobs well done, and tickled under their chins with giggles about how lovely they are. But learning about how to be part of a community, a family, a group is just as important to me as their developing self-love and pride in the things that make them special. What's not fair is allowing them, while they are cute and sweet and under my roof, to believe that the world will start and stop for them, revolve around them, that they have no responsibility to anyone but themselves, and that they will be accountable to nothing but their own desires. When they say, "that's not fair!" responding with the truth and my expectations and a little guidance, I am hoping to ensure that they are not unfair, unkind, and selfish towards others. Feeling like the bad guy? That's not fair. But I'll take it for the team.
(c) Copyright 2014. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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