Annie Lussenburg
A lot of parenting is about common sense. Deep down as parents, we realize that if a child gets showered with gifts, they become unappreciative. If they receive things because they stamp their feet and scream, that behavior will continue because it has been rewarded.
In the last few decades however, common sense seems to be on the decline and its commonality is certainly fading. Let me give you an example. When I was growing up, my parents would have a birthday party for me with perhaps five or six friends at maximum. There would be sandwiches, cake, balloons and a big back yard in which to play. There might be a treasure hunt or a simple game if my mother was feeling energetic. For the large part though, I was instructed to entertain my friends on my own, hardly an onerous task. The end result was an enjoyable afternoon and a few small gifts for me to play with, once everyone else had gone home.
Fast forward a few decades and you see something very different. The birthday party has been organized by an outside company bought in to make the birthday wishes of the ‘Fairy Queen,’ a reality. The house is decorated in an inspired fairyland design and the mothers arrive at the house with their very own princess darlings who clutch enormous presents. You watch the numbers, two, four, six and it just keeps going. “How many are coming?” you ask mom innocently. “The whole class,” she answers, removing her fairy wings before deftly maneuvering a pile of brownies through the door. The party lasts for an insane three hours of fun, punctuated by the occasional melt down amongst the clearly overwhelmed kids. At last the party goers waddle out the door, stuffed with cake and brownies and clutching a goody bag equal in value to the GDP of Montenegro. The fairy queen instead of extolling the party’s virtues, lies in a heap exhausted, ripping off her wings and yelling “How come I didn’t get the pirate party!”
If this sounds like something only those with big fat purses would think of doing for a child’s birthday, I would urge you to think again. In my experience as a parent educator, this scenario or ones like it are played out all over North America on a daily basis. It’s not that people don’t know good sense, it’s that they can’t seem to put it in to practice.
It’s an abundance of energy that makes possible the kinds of excess that many parents practice with their children. It is also energy that elevates and continuously upgrades our expectations, which then in turn become the new societal norm. Our common sense tells us these expectations as to what is normal, have little basis in reality and in many ways are harmful to our children. So why then do parents that know all the reasons that they shouldn’t do something, do it anyway? Whatever force it is that encourages moms and dad to throw away the parental rulebook must be effective indeed and the only way that rulebook can be ignored, is if a definitive effort has been made to render it obsolete.