Five Going on Fifteen; or, Choices

I never wanted to raise a spoiled child (who does?), and the last few weeks, we are having to work to figure out how to avoid this. My daughter is five going on fifteen, proving it on a daily basis.

We took the kids to a Rockies/Cubs game in Denver (Cubs being the key team, there). Coors Field has a section called the Rock Pile where the tickets are somewhere around $5 apiece. That's what we were intending, but we don't go to Coors Field enough to know the ropes. Rock Pile sold out early on, and all that was left by the time we got there were really bad $25 seats. There are four of us, and why would we pay $100 for really bad seats when we wanted it to be kind of a cheap night? Terry and I decided to forget it and try some other time, and Aidan started pouting. Don't worry--we didn't give into the pouting (would just encourage more), but we didn't want to feel like we lied to our kids after we'd been telling them all day we were going. So we bought the horrible, horrible seats and went. They were ready to go home about the 2nd inning, mostly because they couldn't see anything.

One Saturday morning, I got up to run a few errands and decided I'd take Aidan with me and leave Taylor at home with Terry. We went to the store, and I was thinking about the little mani /
pedi place nearby. I told Aidan once that I'd take her to get her toenails painted sometime, and they were open, so we went in. She was THRILLED! She grinned the whole time and just thought it was so neat. She got purple toenails with flower designs on them. However, when we left and got into the car, she seemed to quickly forget that I just took her to do something special and asked me if I would take her to breakfast. I said no, she claimed I never do anything fun with her, and we ended up cutting our errands short and just going home I was so frustrated.


Final story: we took the kids to the Denver Zoo one day, which, by the way, was also way more
expensive than I had anticipated. Things were fine outside of a pregnant mama who could only walk at a snail's pace and the fact that it rained just a bit. However, the route we took around the zoo led to seeing the monkeys last. I was so ready to leave, but you can't ignore the monkeys. That's one of the reasons you even go to the zoo in the first place. As we walked back to the last section, our path took us by the mini-train and carousel. Both kids started begging to ride them, and we said that we'd consider after we saw the monkeys, hoping they'd be too tired to care. They weren't. They both still wanted to ride, and so we decided that I would take Taylor on the train and Terry would take Aidan on the carousel. We've been working with choices, lately, though, to try and help Aidan especially learn that what she decides has consequences and to give her responsibility. We walked past an ice cream stand, and Aidan said, "Ooooh! I want ice cream! Ice cream!" So Terry gave her a choice: ice cream or carousel? After an eternity of deliberation, she chose the carousel, we rode our rides, and started walking to the car.

Aidan started begging for ice cream and claiming that she never gets anything like that, etc. etc. Terry reminded her that she had had a choice and had chosen the carousel. After lots of grumbling, she said, "I wish I was my own boss." Terry explained that because he's her dad, he's her boss, and without one, she wouldn't have the other, and she'd have to make her own money, all that kind of stuff that's over the head of a five-year-old. Aidan was quiet for a few seconds and finally said, "Well, I want you to be the boss of me, but I want you to let me do whatever I want."

Okay, so that one is kind of funny, and Terry has been able to use it as an illustration in some devotionals, etc. But the bottom line is that we've hit one of those spots in parenting that we're just working our way through the best we can. It's a reminder of what a huge responsibility parenting actually is--these kids are going to have lots of times where they need re-directing, and while we won't always handle it perfectly or even know where to begin, we signed on for that job when we had them. :) It's a privilege, though a bit of a scary one, and I just hope we do them justice because they deserve it.