5. Don't Build Things Up
Mar. 1st, 2006 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupIt is the end of a long day and your three-year-old is cranky. What would make her feel better? How about telling her all about the Great Wonderful Thing that will happen when you get where you're going? Describe in loving detail how great the Thing will be. Wouldn't that cheer her up?
Living with little children makes you realize how much of your own life is dependent on delayed gratification. I can get through writing these reports because tonight I'm going to go clog dancing! Or whatever. Generally, though, toddlers don't do the whole delayed gratification thing. You know this on some level, but you're so used to applying it to your own life that you're basically begging yourself to be happy when you use this line with them. Remember that this is really a form of bribery, which normally is what parenthood is all about, but here it has some serious potential drawbacks.
One of two things is probably going to happen, or will happen more than half of the time. First, the child will not want to hear that Grandma is coming over after her nap -- she wants her here, now. So you introduced the whole Great Wonderful Thing into the child's mind only to tell her that it's not going to happen for a certain period of time -- a period of time that the child has no real conception of. Smooth move.
(One perilous way to deal with this is to rephrase the Great Wonderful Thing as a threat. "Well, I guess we're not getting any ice cream because you won't eat your collard greens." You hope that this teaches her that you are capricious and cruel tyrants instead of desperate, pathetic pushovers who will use any form of bribery that might work. It also gives you an out if you never intended to give her ice cream to begin with. But again, it may actually work. As you watch the collard greens inexplicably disappear, you mentally calculate the odds that Ben & Jerry's is open late tonight.)
The other problem is that the Great Wonderful Thing, as often as not, is something you might reasonably expect to occur, but because the universe likes to torture you, will not occur. Gran came down with a cold and isn't coming tonight after all. The library is closed because it's Made-Up New England Holiday Day. The merry-go-round at the mall is being repaired. The winter carnival ended at 3. Etc.
As an adult, you don't care much if things don't pan out because you can do something else. But the only thing unhappier than a bored child is a disappointed child. And it's your own fault, because you built up the Great Wonderful Thing as a coping mechanism. Don't let it happen again.
Living with little children makes you realize how much of your own life is dependent on delayed gratification. I can get through writing these reports because tonight I'm going to go clog dancing! Or whatever. Generally, though, toddlers don't do the whole delayed gratification thing. You know this on some level, but you're so used to applying it to your own life that you're basically begging yourself to be happy when you use this line with them. Remember that this is really a form of bribery, which normally is what parenthood is all about, but here it has some serious potential drawbacks.
One of two things is probably going to happen, or will happen more than half of the time. First, the child will not want to hear that Grandma is coming over after her nap -- she wants her here, now. So you introduced the whole Great Wonderful Thing into the child's mind only to tell her that it's not going to happen for a certain period of time -- a period of time that the child has no real conception of. Smooth move.
(One perilous way to deal with this is to rephrase the Great Wonderful Thing as a threat. "Well, I guess we're not getting any ice cream because you won't eat your collard greens." You hope that this teaches her that you are capricious and cruel tyrants instead of desperate, pathetic pushovers who will use any form of bribery that might work. It also gives you an out if you never intended to give her ice cream to begin with. But again, it may actually work. As you watch the collard greens inexplicably disappear, you mentally calculate the odds that Ben & Jerry's is open late tonight.)
The other problem is that the Great Wonderful Thing, as often as not, is something you might reasonably expect to occur, but because the universe likes to torture you, will not occur. Gran came down with a cold and isn't coming tonight after all. The library is closed because it's Made-Up New England Holiday Day. The merry-go-round at the mall is being repaired. The winter carnival ended at 3. Etc.
As an adult, you don't care much if things don't pan out because you can do something else. But the only thing unhappier than a bored child is a disappointed child. And it's your own fault, because you built up the Great Wonderful Thing as a coping mechanism. Don't let it happen again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Collards are big at our house. Poor kid.
Date: 2006-03-01 07:10 pm (UTC)I really want some candy.
Re: Collards are big at our house. Poor kid.
Date: 2006-03-01 07:46 pm (UTC)I'm tickled to think of you in maternity clothing! Are you starting to show?
pop!
Date: 2006-03-01 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-01 07:42 pm (UTC)