Teaching Our Kids How To Do What We Won’t

Parenting is a serious task.  As parents, we are charged with the task of raising our children to be good citizens.  Parents feel as if they have done a great job when their child graduates from high school, buys their first home, gets their first job, and has children of their own.  Our goal as parents is to have healthy, happy, law abiding children. 

Along the way, we also train our children to follow basic practices, skills and routines.  I have to ask myself why we do this.  We train our children to be adults yet these great behaviors are shunned by most of society.  Breaking the rules is pretty much accepted. 

Below are the top things we teach our children that we don’t do ourselves.

1)      “Take A Nap”

Daycares , preschools, and homes all over the country swear by a mid day nap.  If you have seen a child by noon who has not taken a nap, you have seen them transform into a creature.  Numerous conversations are held based on funny stories of someone’s child being sleepy and acting delirious.  We know that this nap is necessary to clear the brain and the body to prepare for the rest of the day.  The adult workday is based on an eight hour shift and definitely does not include a nap.  It is ironic that we can fully understand the importance of a nap yet totally ignore taking one in order to finish our work.  Adults are no different than children when it comes to transformation when the body is exhausted.  And unlike most children, we are always off to a bad start because we did not get the proper amount of sleep the night before.  There are many parents in the workforce.  Why would a parent schedule a 3pm meeting? By 3pm, most of the staff would be 6 or 7 hours into their day.  They have eaten 2 meals by this time and have not taken a nap.  Wouldn’t this mean that you are having a meeting with a room full of delirious people?  Yet, major decisions are made, discussed, and carried out in afternoon meetings all over the world.  We wonder why 5pm traffic is so hectic.  There are numerous pileups and wrecks during this time.  It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that the majority of these people have not had a nap.  Basically you have a bunch of crazy people driving around the city.  They are sleepy as well as irritated from that 3pm meeting that was held. 

2)      ‘Share”

Having 3 children, this is a command that is used quite often around my home.  I cannot imagine buying 3 of every item as opposed to teaching my children to share their toys.  I smile everytime my children hand over a toy or offer up an alternate so everyone can play together.  This is not just common practice amongst siblings.  We teach our children to share with their friends, fellow students, and even children they do not know if they are in a public place.  At about 10 years old, we start to alter our teaching and move from sharing to selective sharing.  Selective sharing follows the philosophy of share with the worthy.  By this age, we have identified the children who are destructive.  It is like we have a blacklist on the wall with the names of the children who are not allowed to play with the toys or electronics.  This is also the time that we teach monitored sharing.  When our kids do offer up something for another child to play with, they cannot play comfortably as we have them keeping a steady eye on the toy.  They have to police the toy because they know they will hear an hour lecture titled “Why You Are Not Getting Anymore Toys.”  This last for a few years and then we throw them into shock.  We abruptly stop all sharing.  There is no clothes borrowing, no swapping of video games and definitely no exchange of vehicles or cell phones.  We rant and rave when the neighbor’s daughter swaps shirts with our child.  ‘She shops at Simply Fashion but I got you that shirt from Macy’s.”  We don’t take into consideration the fact that they are going to have to adjust from years of training in order to stop sharing.  And yes, the training came from us.  The behavior we once smiled at is now frowned upon.  Certainly as adults we throw sharing out of the window.  If you don’t believe me, just ask the tea party to perform a reenactment of their performance when the healthcare bill was signed.  We have gone so far as to legalize excuses so we are not held responsible for not sharing.  We definitely tell people that they cannot use our car.  Not because we don’t want them too, but because they don’t have insurance.  Whew! Thank goodness for scapegoats!  We laugh at so many jokes about our neighbors borrowing something that they would rather risk their lives going to the 24 hr Wal-Mart after dark instead of asking for a cup of sugar.  Actually we have just stopped knowing the neighbors to avoid the sharing issue all together.

3)      “Eat Your Vegetables”

My children do a great job of eating their meats, fruits, vegetables, and carbs.  We direct their eating patterns from an early age.  Breast Milk and Formula are blended with just the right balance to ensure that our children are eating as healthy as possible.  After the nursing stage, our children move to baby food.  These are small jars or containers of foods containing little to no additives.  Even if a parent decides to cook their child’s food in the early years instead of using baby food, they cook their vegetables separately, adding little to no seasoning.  Some people actually go organic or grow their own vegetables to ensure the highest of quality.  By age 18, we have been exposed to the food chart more times than you can imagine.  Yet, we still don’t get it.  We feed our children baby food as we are chowing down on a fast food burger.  We fix their plates with equal portions of food but pile our plate with carbs.  We have even made it okay for companies to package our food with ingredients we cannot pronounce or explain.  Every day, we end up eating more unknown ingredients than actual food. 

4)      ‘Sit Down and Listen”

No parent wants the dreaded phone call or letter pinned to the chest advising that their child has not listened to the teacher during the day.  We know that punishments are soon to follow as not listening to authority will not be tolerated.  The child has no choice over who their teacher is, yet they are taught to respect the position.  As adults, we defy this rule any chance we get.  We look for faults and flaws in our bosses so we can convince ourselves that we know more than them.  Unlike our children’s teachers, we get a choice in who becomes President, yet when our candidate doesn’t win, we disrespect them and find every reason we can not to follow their leadership.  We get kicked out of basketball games, baseball games, and off of soccer and football fields because the coach hasn’t got a clue about how to train the team.  If the coach had a clue, our child would be playing the entire game.  We run our months on a regular basis in order to justify why we should not pay attention.  Even while we are telling our children to listen, we are on the cell phone telling our best friend how our boss is an idiot and how Obama is clueless.  The worst example of this is when our kids are trying to tell us something.  They scream for our attention by acting out or holding things in.  Often times, we find out to late that we should have shut up and listened to their cry for help. 

5)      “Don’t tell lies”

Uhhhhh let’s just say that one is self explanatory.  Well let me clarify just a little.  As adults, we separate and categorize lies.  We rate them and decide which ones are worse.  It is not okay to tell me you were at your friend’s house when you were at a party but it is okay for me to tiptoe around the house when the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock at the door.  It is not okay for you to knock over the vase and say you didn’t do it but it is okay for me to tell my boss I can’t come to work today because I am sick.  However, I feel just fine. 

No wonder our kids are confused!