Good character. As parents,
grandparents, aunts and uncles, it needs to be modeled. No question.
It’s our job. Our duty really, to
hand over the reigns to a kind and decent next generation. We spend a lot of time on the “do’s”. Do your homework. Do your chores. Do your best.
And we put a whole lot of energy into those “don’ts.” Don’t lie.
Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. All good stuff. All necessary. Reinforcing the basics.
Now, these do’s and don’ts are usually black and white. Clear-cut.
But most of what we do or don’t do doesn’t fall into either camp. So, what about the grey that makes up most of
the middle ground between these two worlds?
There’s a lot of grey out there, just waiting to seep into your child’s
day. And temptation? It feeds on kids for sport, waiting for them
to be impulsive. Or dared. Or teased.
Or pressured. How far can they
swim out into those grey waters before they are pulled in by darker currents? This is tricky business, made all the more
complicated by the age of cell phones and social networking sites. And sometimes our solution is to force-feed
them more don’ts. Buckle-down. Get tough.
Show them who’s boss. It’s called
for. Sometimes.
But, what about something else?
Another possibility. What about controlling
the chaos? Define the mischief. If you want to lessen the odds of serious
trouble, then define mischief. Present
mischief as a smart alternative to being bad; to momentarily break free of all
the restrictions without doing any serious damage or harm.
“Pssst.” My twelve year-old gives
me a curious look. “See that guy over
there,” I whisper. Still a little
baffled, she nods. “He needs some
pudding.” When the man turns his back to
us in the grocery store aisle, I quickly place two small boxes of instant
pudding into his cart and wheel away.
Grace giggles.
“That guy needs muffins,” she whispers to me just a few aisles later.
“You think?” I ask. She nods,
very seriously.
“His doctor says he’s not getting enough bran.” As the man bends down to compare prices on
canned gravy, Grace quietly places the bran muffins into the stranger’s cart
and off we go. We are now safely in the
grey. The key word here is safely. Mischief.
No harm. No damage. Just wisps of chaos. Letting off steam. Breaking rules of no great consequence and free
from the dark current of bigger and bolder trouble.
When I look back around, Grace isn’t anywhere in sight. A few minutes later, I see her hustling
across an aisle with some sort of tube of lotion. She mouths some sentence to me. I am only able to make out the key words,
“foot cream” and “bunion”. It’s about
all I need to know.
While we’re paying, I look around and notice a few confused people
staring strangely at items in their carts.
Grace and I giggle. She points
out that I was right about the guy with the pudding. He’s a fan and bought it without a second
thought. While I’m laughing about the
guy with the pudding, I pull out of my cart what looks to be an industrial
sized bottle of pills intended to relieve joint pain. I turn to Grace.
“You’re aging rapidly,” she says.
“You must have forgot to put it on your list.”
We leave the store in small spurts of laughter. My daughter had waded out into the grey with
me. I got to define the grey. My terms.
My boundaries. For a few moments,
there were no do’s. No don’ts. The chaos controlled. For now.
I might be simply biding my time.
But for a moment, I have offered the smart and healthy alternative to
bad behavior. We are unhinged. Reckless, but in very small degrees. Objective achieved, though. Out here in the grey, we are still far enough
from our do’s and don’ts to know just where it is still safe to swim.
P.S. ---- The daughter mentioned above is several years older these days, and still fully understands the art of becoming unhinged in the tiniest of degrees.
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