Kate and Edith

“You’re sending me away to boarding school,” intones ninth grader, Melissa. “I’ll never speak to you again.”

“But, Honey, you know the schools here locally are terrible,” Mom responds. “You yourself said that you’re not learning anything, that your teachers are uncaring and borderline abusive, that your classmates can barely read.”

“I don’t care; I don’t want to go; I hate you.”

Melissa, please try to understand. Your father and I are making a big sacrifice both emotional and economic. You yourself said you wanted to go to boarding school.”

“I just said I’d go so you’d stop badgering me about it. I don’t want to go and I’m not going.”

“You most certainly are going, Young Lady. Now go to your room. And as a punishment, you are limited to only five hours of Facebook and texting tonight instead of your usual six.”

***

What’s wrong with this picture? Only everything. Indeed these parents might want to throw away the entire conversation keeping only the frame.

As parents, we are unlikely to be able to have it both ways. Our kids can like us. Or we can, now and again, not give our kids everything they want. We cannot “have our Kate and Edith too.”

When was the last time a five year-old waiting to get her inoculations for kindergarten said, “Yes, Mumsy, I acknowledge that there may be a modicum of physical discomfort involved in the forthcoming procedure, but I accept the necessity of these shots so that I may lessen the likelihood of contracting communicable diseases including but not limited to cholera, diphtheria, measles, mumps, and rubella.”

To the contrary, every child in the pediatrician’s office is hollering, “Don’t let some stranger hold me down and stick metal in my arm!”

As unpleasant as it is to insist that your child go through the pain of shots, it’s more difficult still to watch them and care for them with a real, honest-to-goodness, life-threatening disease.

Which brings me to some gentle advice regarding fussing children. If you have made up your mind that your decision is unequivocally in a child’s best interest–getting shots, say–then: listen patiently as they explicate chapter and verse why you are wrong, allow them to voice their views, nod as they gripe.

And then: don’t respond.

Don’t engage; don’t get into it. Don’t repeat your point of view. At the risk of comparing your beloved 14 year-old child to a well known barn yarn animal: “Do not wrestle with a pig in mud. You’ll just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.”

Most decisions can and should involve your kids. Kids learn how to make good choices by–eh–making choices. Which shirt do you want to wear? What do you want to eat? With whom do you want to play? Do you want to help me wash the dog or help me clean the yard?

As kids get older, they should even be allowed to make bad decisions. Indeed, self esteem comes not from never failing, but from learning that failure means another chance rather than the end of the world. I didn’t study and I got a C. Stuff happens.

And maybe I better study next time.

Your kids don’t have to like you when they’re kids. They’ll like you well enough when they’re older. It’s our job as parents to give our kids what they need. It is also our job as parents to ignore what our kids want.

Otherwise, we’d acquiesce to their requests for ice cream for breakfast and unlimited access to “Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Blood, Blood, Blood, Kill, Kill, Kill.”

Being afraid of “What if my kids don’t like me?” is not the opposite of compliance. But when you signed up to be a parent you agreed to make the tough calls on occasion–which involves, now and again, an unhappy child.