It kills me when parents hold their children up to a higher standard than they hold themselves. Even though I, too, am sometimes guilty of this, it nevertheless drives me insane. For example, have you ever…
Lost or forgotten something (especially your phone, wallet, keys, money or anything else that’s pretty important)?
Spilled a drink or otherwise made a huge mess on accident?
Forgotten to do your house or yardwork—or even just said, “Meh, I don’t feel like doing it today”?
Totally lost a fuse and yelled at everyone like a brat?
Refused to eat something that you do not like?
I could go on, of course, but the point is that as adults, we do these things every day of our lives and think that because we’re special grown ups we should get to do whatever we want. We hold our children, however, to a much higher standard, expecting them to be groomed, clean, have their homework done, chores done, lose nothing, forget nothing and never, ever spill a drop of a drink. Ever.
How unreasonable is this? Could you imagine yelling at your spouse, “Look what you did! Now go clean it up!” when she spills a drink, or to demand, “Why isn’t the laundry done?” of your husband after you’ve both had a long day? Some of us even “nag” our significant others to do tasks, yet we think our kids should have no trouble remembering. I, myself, have gone off and yelled like a very immature person at the people I love most and felt pretty bad afterward.
Nobody grounded me for it.
Our kids have long days, too, yet we seem to think they are somehow inhuman, and unperturbed by things like, oh, stress, emotions and being alive.
My husband and I got so angry with Wood Sprite when she ordered something at a restaurant and then didn’t want to eat it. She said it tasted funny, even though it’s what she’s asked for and she’s had it before. Maybe she just didn’t feel well, or maybe it really did taste funny to her (we tried it and it was fine). Either way, we were very disrespectful to her just because we spent money on food she didn’t want.
We struggle every day to overcome our baser instincts when it comes to “handling children” from our own experiences and those of people around us, but boy sometimes we turn into monsters. It’s wrong to expect our kids to never make mistakes, to be more capable and responsible than we are. We need to be the example ourselves to show them how it’s done.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
0 comments