Article Contributed on: 1/7/2009 10:08:39 PM
I'm coming to learn that watching your children grow is a bit like all of the rest of life -- only much more intensely personal. After all, unless you're on target to be the next Shakespeare, (I'm not, just in case you were wondering), your kids are your legacy to the world. Odds are that come 2145 nobody except your great-great-grandkids will remember what you did, said, or wrote.
Unless you REALLY screwed something up. But maybe that's just my cynicism poking through...
So like your job, marriage, friendships and driving record it's important to note that they're not really all that important in the grand scheme of things. (Captain Obvious! Call your office!) As such and as they manifest themselves we need to remind ourselves that it's the kids that matter and everything else is subject to "adjusting expectations."
Perhaps I allow myself to be haunted too much by this idea, but I can't honestly remember a day passing where I haven't thought to myself, "how is this going to affect what my kids expect" as they grow older, both for better and worse. And I just upped the stakes significantly.
I spent New Year's Eve eve and New Year's Eve on a trip to and from Fort Worth, Texas. Now I hear you asking, "why" and not meaning to sleight all those Texans who couldn't find a reason to stay in the state they say they love, I would have been asking that myself - but for the reason for the trip: I had to go pickup my new pinball machine. (And not just any pinball machine, BTW:
THE pinball machine. A real beaute.)
I LOVE this game and always have. I can remember a time when I would leave an arcade if they didn't have it. Now it lives in my basement and my kids love it or at least the idea of it too. In fact, it's now the perfect bribe for good behavior - whether or not winning a free game holds the same meaning if Daddy has the key to it in his pocket.
But here's where I'm at now: does this spoil them? Well, I think it certainly carries that potential, seeing as how it's not exactly something anyone else at school has in their house. The question then becomes one of how to fight that potential and I think I have the answer: continue as we did before we had the machine.
So the beatings will double, we'll cut the gruel rations in half and be more exacting in what we expect from them so far as their chores are concerned.
Well, that or we might consider talking to them about how fortunate we've been, how we've lived in such a way that enabled us to buy the thing, how it's not something to brag about and the fact that it's a reward to them rather than a right.
I could go either way. Stay tuned...
Chris Stone has sometimes enjoyed rock opera...