A Different Type of Spinning Your Wheels
May 31, 2013
The Coveted Plastic Monkey (Silverton Style)
June 27, 2013
This is an essay that relates to a telephone conversation I had with my brother-in-law, followed by another conversation with a good friend of mine. Both parties complained profusely about the latest headaches with their kids. I immediately thought of an essay to write about the situation.
What parent doesn’t want the best for their offspring? Maybe certain selfish jerks that decide their existence on this earth might be better served by totally abandoning the person they helped to create in the first place. This generally happens right after they first find out a child is about to enter the picture. Since guilt alone, coupled with the knowledge that there’s a special place in Hell reserved for people who might consider this option, most people won’t do it. Folks generally decide it’s better to help raise the progeny in some way rather than totally neglect them.
So if that were the reasoning, you’d want to do everything within your power to care for the child, right? Protect and nurture them, correctimundo? Shield the offspring from all sorts of outside influences that could supposedly harm them, exactly? Try to avoid negative behavior that you yourself might’ve experienced as a youth, agreed? Those actions that you can look back on as having had a deleterious impact upon your own journey into adulthood, precisely?
Well not necessarily sportsfans. Suppose you had all sorts of experiences during your youth that left you with a bad taste in your mouth for them. Those self-same experiences and actions are now considered good for the growth and development of people under the age of about twenty. Presents a bit of a conundrum in terms of the correct way you’re supposed to help raise the kid, doesn’t it?
Let’s introduce a classic example in order to illustrate the point. You’ve always had a special dislike in your heart for vegetables. This hatred is deep seated in the way that some beer aficionados are hostile to the fact that Oktoberfest only happens in October.
Of course it doesn’t help matters that when you were growing up your parents made you eat all the vegetables on your plate before you could even think about looking in the direction of your dessert. You couldn’t force feed them to the dog since they made sure it wasn’t anywhere near the kitchen between 5:00 and 8:00. Other than finding new and innovative ways to gag on those cooked plants sitting on your plate, what to do?
How about bringing up the subject of your sister’s report card. She only got a C in Math because she was able to convince her friend to distract the teacher long enough to copy her test answers. The ensuing family discussion (a.k.a. ragefest) creates a diversion. Sufficiently long enough for you to stuff the vegetables in your pocket. How cool is that? Now all you need to do is remember to take the contents out of your pants cavities before dumping the clothing in the laundry hamper.
These days it turns out that every nutritionist and their cousin is telling you a person needs to consume at least five servings every day of fruit and vegetables. Each and every day? Five servings? This request sounds about as attainable as asking a marijuana smoker too avoid massive confectionary consumption after they’ve partaken of their favorite recreational drug.
So what do you, a person who considers the majority of vegetables to be green spears of death, tell your progeny? Keep eating that plant roughage even though I spent a large percentage of evening meals during my formative years contemplating how to avoid them? Whoever said emotional confusion about your youth is one of the hallmarks of adulthood got it totally right.
This brings up another grownup conundrum. During your early memory making years you relished the opportunity to partake in all manner of extreme sporting activities. These days with the phenomenal growth of “X-Games” type competitions and other pushing the limits sports, lots of youth want to participate. As an adult what are you supposed to say to your kid when they want to build a skateboard ramp in the backyard, or fly over the irrigation ditch on their bicycle? At the same time authority type figures are telling you children shouldn’t do these sorts of danger enhanced physical endeavors. Don’t allow these activities because most adults can’t do them.
Nobody said being a grownup and having to nurture the growth and development of your child was going to be a bowl of cherries. In fact, bewilderment is often a more prevalent emotion than anything else. What course of action should you follow? Maybe sending your son and/or daughter to that combination boot camp/monastery isn’t such a crazy idea?
