(Original Post - June 2012)
"Can you pause it Daddy? I’ve got to pee.”
Norah jumps up and races for the washroom, pumping her arms like only a four-year old can.
I look from her to the game we’re playing. I wonder if I’m missing something. Is this some new, high-tech version of an old favorite that’s been played since the 12th century? Pause it? Really?
We’re playing checkers.
Life is demanding. It’s full of obligations that take up an incredible amount of time. We devote our days to careers, household responsibilities, family commitments, appointments, and emails. If you throw a couple of young kids in the mix, the demands increase exponentially. Perhaps this is the reason that I’ve gone eight months without so much as attempting to write a blog post.
Or perhaps not.
When Norah said this to me a while back, it got me thinking. She and James are growing up in a world where everything happens at the touch of a button. Everything. Life, essentially, is ‘On Demand’. When I was a kid, I (like most kids) loved cartoons. There was nothing better than sitting down on a Saturday morning with a bowl of Froot Loops (shoveling them down before they got soggy), entranced as you watched and wondered how in the name of God the Smurfs were going to escape Gargamel this time. I grew up in a small town in the 1980s and 90s; small enough that I graduated high school without Cable TV ever reaching our rural living rooms. I grew up with the ‘dynamic duo’ that was CBC and NTV; two channels that, to a small boy, seemed like more than enough. Wayne and Shuster, followed by a decent Montreal Canadiens team on Saturday night – what more could you ask for? But yes, two channels. Limited programming to say the least. So, in order to get my fix of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, I would have to wait a week. Saturday morning. Then, and only then would the fantastic world of cartoons be accessible to me.
A few weeks ago, I was sitting with my son James who, despite his cuteness, brings ‘demanding’ to an entirely new level. He was in the mood for an episode of The Backyardigans. “I wants Pablo, Daddun!!” was how he put it. When he finally said ‘Please’, I indulged him. Those elusive Backyardigans couldn’t be found on Treehouse, Disney Jr, YTV, or Family, so we went to On Demand. “I wants Pablo Polka,” James adds. I scan down through the episodes for the Polka Palace Party episode, but it’s not there. Never fear, my little boy; this search is far from complete. I go into Netflix, where I instantly access 78 episodes, and I scan until I find the one James wants. A few minutes later, he’s shaking his bum to Pablo’s accordion playing at the hoedown in Cheyenne, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘This kid has the world at his fingertips.’ With a simple snap, or more accurately, a few clicks of a remote, he can get just what he wants. Life, on demand. Similarly, the example of Norah and the checker board illustrates this point. We make the world stop and go at the click of a button. It’s instantaneous, and readily accessible. When I was a kid I used to spend hours making mixed tapes, making sure each choice was a good one, ensuring that there was room for that latest Ace of Base hit because you were only going to fit a dozen or so songs on the cassette. Now, James and Norah will name obscure songs at random as we’re driving down the highway, and a few seconds later, they’re coming through the car speakers via YouTube on the iPhone. Hundreds of thousands of songs at their popsicle-stained fingertips, and all they need to do is say the name.
The Short Thought, which is not so short, is this - kids can be very demanding. Very. But mine have shown me that I am as much, or more, to blame for this behavior than any other contributing factor. In many instances, we’ve taught kids that if they want something, there’s a very good chance that they can get it rather quickly. James wakes up and usually demands juice before he says Good Morning. Why? Because since he was an infant, I would instantly run downstairs and get his milk the minute he woke up. Now, it’s simply expected. Myself and Tara were recently trying to get supper on the table, and it seemed Norah and James were sabotaging us with incessant demands. When Norah said she wanted a fork instead of a spoon, I muttered something about ‘demands’ as I put aside the chicken to get it. Tara looked at me and said, ‘Why don’t you just ask her to get it herself. She’s four.’ Norah jumped from her chair with a smile, and rushed to the drawer. ‘Yeah,’ she added. ‘I’m big enough. See?’ She grabbed a fork and returned to her chair. The habit of enabling demanding behavior is not only hard to break; sometimes, it’s hard to see.
As a final example, I saw a kid at Norah’s skating a while back that illustrated another point. He was unsteady on his feet, and was skating without assistance when his foot suddenly slipped beneath him. Incredibly, he made a very athletic twist of his body, compensating for the slip, and he avoided falling. His face, his eyes, were bursting with pride. He turned to his Dad, his smile threatening to stretch his face. The smile, however, faded pretty quickly. His father was turned the other way, motionless on his own skates as he typed an ‘urgent’ text message. I watched the two for a while afterwards, unsurprised that the little boy was now more intent on seeing that his father was paying attention. ‘Dad. Dad? Are you watching Dad? Dad. Watch, Dad!’ The father was probably thinking that the boy was overly demanding of his attention on that particular day.
The boy was probably thinking, ‘I have to be’.
So yes, kids are very demanding. What mine, and others, have taught me is that we as adults play an integral part in their demanding behavior. We need to look at our own behaviors when our kids make demands of us.
It’s only natural that kids will make demands, if these demands are answered quickly and consistently. When I think about whether I’ve been a significant factor in the sometimes demanding behavior of my kids, I concede that I am. Without pause, I’ll bow my head, bend the knee, and accept that crown.
King me…
Just a thought – Have a game of checkers with a kid.
'Life is demanding without understanding,
I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes…'
-Ace of Base
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