An invitation to my nephew’s wedding in Southern California presented a perfect opportunity to fulfill my promise to take my granddaughters to Disneyland. Some accumulated coupons and a red-hot, off-season package deal allowed us to stay for full four nights and days at the hotel and theme park.
We were happily ensconced in our methodical efforts to ride all of the rides we had circled on the Disneyland map when we encountered a very unhappy guest in the line for the Alice in Wonderland ride. In between plaintive sobs, a little girl pleaded with her parents, “Please don’t make me go! I’m scared. Just take me to the car and I’ll stay there without crying. I promise…”
Unfortunately the parents seemed to be impervious to the little girl’s pleas, and everyone waiting in line was visibly uncomfortable with what seemed to be the parents’ indifference to their daughter.
One particularly distraught stranger spoke up. “If she does not want to go on the ride, why make her?”
The mother shot back a vitriolic response. “We just dropped $150 bucks to ride these rides and she’s going on them whether she likes it or not!”
“She’ll be okay once she gets on the ride,” the father assured the stranger. “She’s just a little upset because she just went on the Snow White ride and she thought it was scary.”
Hello! I thought to myself. The key word here is “scary.” And what part of that word sounds like fun?
This is not the first time I have watched misguided parents force their children to do “fun activities” that were actually terrifying and not any fun at all. The rationale that accompanies such behavior usually goes something like this: “Because the child has never done this activity before, he or she does not know that it is fun. Therefore I am going to force the child to do the activity so that he or she can learn that it is fun, and as a result have a good time.”
What this rationale does not take into consideration is the normal developmental stages that a child goes through. For example, adults know that the wicked witch on the Snow White ride is not real and therefore cannot hurt them. But the same is not true for a child entrenched in the Intuitive Stage of development, where fictional characters are as real as nonfictional characters. If adults would stop and think how frightening a real-life wicked witch could be, they might reconsider forcing a very young child to experience one.
There’s something else at stake when parents force their children to do things before the children are ready to do them: We are asking children to go against their instincts. Fear is one of the main things that helps keep kids safe because it is fear that prompts kids to avoid danger.
When we force a child to override his or her fear, and when we reward the child for doing so, we inadvertently encourage that child to ignore the fear—and that could lead to disastrous results. Healthy fear is something that needs to be nurtured, not stifled.
Meanwhile, the best person to determine what is actually fun for a child is the child. And what might be fun for one child might not necessarily be fun for anyone else.
The key is to be completely honest about the purpose of an activity, event, or outing. If it is for a child to have fun, everything should be completely child-centered and, as much as possible, the child should be able to choose what happens. On the other hand, if the purpose is to have the child share enjoyable experiences with others, there might need to be a compromise in the choice of activities. This is where taking turns choosing a fun activity is appropriate.
I recall that two years ago, my six-year-old granddaughter was fearful about many of the rides at Disneyland. As a result, one adult took her to less threatening attractions while the other adult took her older sister on the more sophisticated rides.
This year, Sekai was chomping at the bit to go on all the rides (including all of the high speed rollercoaster rides) with her older sister and me. No fears, no tears, just an enormous amount of fun that will reside with my granddaughter’s great memories for a long time to come.
I should have suspected that something was up when the doors opened on a subway train that I was boarding and everyone except eight rowdy teens disembarked and scrambled into the neighboring car. But by the time I figured it out, the train was ready to leave the station. So I hopped onboard and took the first seat that I came to.
When the train started, rap music began to blast from a boom box and the eight teens started rapping at the top of their lungs.
Before that moment I had always dismissed criticism of rap to the proverbial generation gap. But that’s before I had an opportunity to actually listen to a rap song all the way through.
As I expected, the language was obscene by average standards. But much worse was the anger and hatred that was spewing forth from boom box as well as the eight teens. Any hope that the music would uplift and inspire was destroyed by the degrading lyrics that were seeping from every pore of each teen’s body.
I couldn’t help wonder, “What chance do these kids have of developing the positive attitudes that are imperative for building self-esteem and personal success when such negative thoughts are being drilled into their brains?”
And that’s when I decided to do something that I seldom do. I decided to judge another person’s creative work and deem it “bad for kids.”
That’s not to say that all rap music is bad because I am certain that some of it is acceptable, and maybe even positive.
But I can say without equivocation that rap music is something that parents need to screen before allowing their children to become engaged with it. This recommendation is based on the “garbage in, garbage out” theory in which negative thoughts and energy only beget negative beliefs and actions.
As I listened to those teens rapping all of those toxic lyrics, I wished that whoever wrote them could have somehow taken the amazing opportunity that he or she had been given to speak to young people and had used that opportunity for good. How wonderful to have heard those teens rapping messages that would have uplifted and inspired them instead of making them angry and hostile.
I realize that I was wishing for a lot. But then again, it was because I sincerely believe that there is no less at stake than the mental and psychological health and welfare of an entire generation of young people.
I love grandparenting. I really do. But just like everything else, it has its drawbacks.
Ask most grandparents and they’ll tell you that one of the best parts about grand-parenting is the fact that that you can spoil your grandchildren to death, then send them home where their parents have to do all of the hard stuff.
While that might be true, I always say, “Control is proportionate to responsibility,” which means that the more responsibility one assumes, the more control he or she will have. This suggests that not having the bottom line responsibility for a grandchild’s life is a situation that has an upside and downside.
Although I believe that there is a lot of value in allowing children to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes (because mistakes are one of the best ways for a person to learn and grow), I am currently feeling a bit of resistance to the idea of standing by and letting the chips fall where they may when my children, as the parents of my grandchildren, make mistakes.
What if the mistakes that my children make have a negative impact on my grandchildren? How fair is it for my grandchildren to suffer the consequences of their parents’ mistakes? And is it not acceptable, maybe even mandatory, for me to intervene and mitigate the consequences of the parents’ mistakes (only insofar as they impact my grandchildren) when I might be able to do so?
Answering these questions has been one of the greatest struggles that I have faced as a grandparent. And I go back and forth with the struggle on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, when my granddaughters recently called me from the other side of the world, and when I discovered the reasons for their racking sobs, I immediately purchased an airline ticket that would allow me to fly to their rescue. (In fact, I’m writing this blog from the seat of an airplane!) So I guess that says a bit about where I stand with this entire issue at this point in the game.
But just as it was with parenting, this is a game that I am playing blindfolded. So who knows where I’ll be in a month or a year.
I’ll keep you posted.
We experienced quite a trauma involving Kaytee Button last week.
Kaytee is the Teddy Bear Hamster that I strongly encouraged my granddaughter not to get right before she left for a long summer vacation. I argued that it would be far more reasonable for her to wait until she returned home so that she would not be required to find someone to care for the animal while she was gone. I even went so far as to assert that I was unwilling to take on the responsibility of a hamster for three months—just in case she was counting on me to do so—which, as it turns out, she was.
But the heart wants what it wants, and once my granddaughter earned enough money to purchase the hamster and all of the trappings, she made a beeline to the pet store.
All went well until two days before my granddaughter was to leave New York. As hard as she tried, she was unable to find anyone to care for Kaytee Button during the entire summer. So—you guessed it—the responsibility defaulted to me. Sigh.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love animals. And who could not love a Teddy Bear Hamster—especially one as cute as Kaytee Button? It’s just that I didn’t need an additional responsibility at this time in my life.
That said, all was going well until my daughter swept into my apartment with a friend who had two nieces in tow. The girls were about 10 and 11. I was in the middle of cleaning my kitchen and was unaware of the two girls finding their way to the hamster cage in my bedroom. So before I knew what was happening, one girl had grabbed the hamster out of the cage while the other insisted that she be given a turn to hold the hamster too. Somehow during the back and forth, the hamster was dropped and in a primeval attempt at self-preservation, Kaytee fled to the kitchen where she found sanctuary behind the appliances.
When it became obvious that retrieving the hamster was going to become a complicated—even daunting—endeavor, my guests fled the house.
I got my super to help me move all of the appliances away from the wall—to no avail. The hamster could not be found, and there was not a single clue as to where she might have gone.
That night, I moved the living room recliner to the walkway leading into the kitchen and spent the night anxiously hoping that Kaytee would reappear. Unfortunately, she didn’t.
To say that I was devastated is an understatement. Even so, I had a day of back-to-back meetings that couldn’t be rescheduled, so I left the apartment in a total state of agitation.
When I returned, my assistant announced that throughout the day she had heard Kaytee scratching from inside the stove!
We pulled the stove away from the wall, and attempts were made to lure the hamster out with peanut butter and all kinds of other bait. But nothing worked. That’s when we realized that Kaytee was trapped in the stove and couldn’t get out.
The next step involved my assistant, her husband and me completely dismantling the stove. Of course this meant that I had to have the stove reassembled by a professional. (One simply can’t imagine how many hundreds of screws and parts go into making up a stove!)
Thankfully after a day and a half of pure trauma, Kaytee Button was safely back in her cage—but not without complications. The stress from all of the shaking and banging that it took to dismantle the stove resulted in Kaytee contracting Wet Tail, a common hamster malady that can be fatal if not treated properly.
So, in addition to paying to have my stove put back together, there was an expensive vet bill and medications to pay for as well.
So what’s the moral of this little tale? I can think of a lot of them. But the most important one is to help kids realize that an animal is a major commitment, one that must be thoroughly thought though before getting one as a pet. It is imperative that a pet owner has a backup pet-care plan in place before getting a pet. And hopefully that plan will not include an assumption like “No worries. Grandma can always take care of the hamster, because how hard can it be?”
Okay. It’s a fair question.
“How do you teach children about sex without causing them to “become sexual” too early?” someone asked after reading my last blog.
First of all, parents need to understand and accept the fact that human sexuality is a part of human life and human beings are born with sexual attributes and natures. So, “becoming sexual” begins in the womb.
Next, parents need to treat every part of their child’s body equally. This means that from the beginning, they need to call every body part by its actual name. Unfortunately, when one nicknames private parts and does not do the same thing with other body parts, one can subconsciously convey the thought that private parts might be different from other body parts in a negative way.
Think about it. Why would one call an arm an “arm” while calling a penis a “wee wee” unless there were something strange or unacceptable about the word “penis?”
In addition to calling body parts by their real names, as soon as a child can understand, parents need to explain to their children what the purpose is of every body part and how it works. This can happen quite early in life. And the earlier it happens, the better.
When my children were toddlers, I put kids books about human sexuality on the bookshelf with all of the other kids books about various subjects. Then whenever the children chose the human sexuality books at bedtime, we went through them just as we would any other book.
There was always a great deal of interest when a new book about human sexuality was introduced. However, interest would begin to wane once my son or daughter understood the contents of the book. It was like, “Okay, okay we got that. Now let’s move on to something else.”
Early sex education came in handy when it came time to discuss the potential dangers that surround children. Since sexual abusers can often be family members, children need to know at an early age how to respond to inappropriate advances and behavior.
Staving off sexual abuse begins with (1) an understanding and respect for one’s body, and (2) an understanding that other people do not have the right to touch a person’s body in ways that are uncomfortable for the person.
Protecting children from sexual abuse also begins with continued open and honest communications between parents and children. This is something that needs to be fostered from the very beginning of a child’s life.
Victorian mores might have served a purpose when they were first invented, but they are irrelevant to the twenty-first century and need to be replaced with a healthy love and appreciation for every aspect of human sexuality.