Why you don’t give your kids everything they want, Reason 1 “Easy Going”
When we describe someone as “easygoing” what are we really saying? I think it’s that their threshold for being happy and satisfied even when they didn’t get all that they wanted is set pretty low (easy to achieve). It’s easy for them to feel satisfied under most circumstances, not only when they get everything exactly the way they wanted it. Enter, the ministry of comfort removal. When you intentionally delay gratification of your child’s desire or when you give them something a little less or even a little “other” than what they had in mind and you can get them to be happy with that then I think that you have done them a great favor for life.
Recalibrating their mind like this is important because your job isn’t always going to give you everything you wish it would. Neither will your marriage at times. Ditto your spiritual walk. But can you be happy anyway? Happy with all that you do have? Genuinely grateful that you have gotten 80% of everything you ever dreamed you would ever achieve in life and that overall you are amazingly blessed even though you might wish you could be 2 inches taller or thinner or make a little more money or you wish that coat came in brown not just in blue….or….
Consumerism with its endless choices can make us think we “deserve” to have everything to suit us all the time. I think good parenting means helping our children learn that life is really great most of the time IF you have the attitude of being happy with what you get even when it’s not always exactly what you wanted. What we are promised by the Father is that we’ll always have what we truly need.
Tongue Piercing
One of the lessons we have learned from parenting our six is to “choose your battles.” Some parents fight their kids about everything. It polarizes the relationship and makes things far too tense and competitive in the house. We have decided to try and avoid always being the “opposition party” by asking ourselves if the issue is a moral issue, something hat has eternal consequences or at least life threatening in some way. If so, then by all means we will resist our children’s actions with all the strength we possess. But most matters, we discover, do not fit into this category. It is usually a matter of style or a child’s desire to color outside the lines a bit. Jessica has wanted a tongue pierce for many years. We told her she was too young, and to her great credit, although she wanted to do it she restrained her liberty out of respect to us, but this year she is 17 and so our argument faded and we yielded. It took five minutes. Her tongue swelled up to about 1 1.2 inches thick, but through all that pain she was happy. It was a harmless symbol of her independence and freedom to express herself. Even though hardly anyone can even see it.
