I have long been puzzled by the way most children hate the things that we adults love most.
Sitting down to eat dinner, for instance. If someone bought food for me, cooked it for me and served it to me, I would be more than willing to sit there and eat it. As a matter of fact, I would be just as happy as a clam. Even if it was clams!
Kids, though, act like it’s pure torture to have to sit their little butts in a chair for twenty minutes. They chew the same bite interminably. They spill things. They crumble. They whine. They scootch around. The bang their forks on their water glasses. They fall out of their chairs.
They say, “How many more bites?” and “Do I HAVE to eat my salad?” and “What exactly did you say is in here?” Seriously, if it were me, I would eat it AND I’d like it.
(One of my favorite quotes says that you spend the first two years of your children’s lives trying to get them to walk and talk, but then you spend the next 16 years trying to get them to sit down and be quiet.)
Taking a long shower is another thing. You know how good it feels to get in the shower, turn it on just as hot as you can stand it, breathe in the steam and let all your troubles swirl away down the drain? Ahhh. Ecstasy.
Kids, though, if you try to get them into the shower, they yell. They “go limp” and end up on the bathroom floor. They say, “I hate the shower! It gets water in my eyes! It gets water up my nose! I need my goggles! I don’t wanna take a shower! I don’t wanna!”
Well, first of all, I don’t really understand how you can physically get water up your nose in the shower. That seems like a feat of unnatural contortions. Secondly, it’s funny to see your child coming out of the shower wearing steamed-up goggles.
While we’re on the subject of relaxing, let’s talk about naps. Have you ever met a kid who consciously wanted to take a nap? Neither have I. Most afternoons, though, if you offered me the choice between a bag of gold or a 45 minute nap, I would take the nap hands down!
Why doesn’t anyone force you to take a nap when you’re a grown-up? Just about every day, I have the same conversation with my three-year-old. She doesn’t know that one of my biggest fantasies involves hearing the same words coming from her dad’s mouth, but aimed at me: “Devone! Get back in your room and close your eyes right now! I don’t want to hear another peep out of you until naptime is over. Do you understand me?”
On a related note, kids never want to go to be, either. I spend most of the day waiting to go to bed! I love my bed! By the end of a long day, all I want to do is put on my cozy pjs and my fuzzy socks and snuggle under the covers with my Side-Sleeper Pro pillow.
Kids want to stay up until they either crash (face first into a bowl of late-night cereal) or flip out, screaming and crying themselves to sleep in a tiredness-induced delirium. Not me. I WANT to go to bed. Right now, as a matter of fact.
Kids spend their time wanting to grow up, get bigger and be older.
We spend our time wishing we could be kids again, get smaller and be younger.
They aren’t really just tiny adults like I once thought – they are really our total opposites!
from my 3/11/12 article for www.mentorpatch.com
