sparked from "Please take a picture!"....
BUT I DON’T WANT TO!
These words scream in my head so
often that when I hear them coming from one of my kids, I almost don’t
recognize that they are not coming from me.
I don’t want to.
They don’t want to clean up their
rooms, read books for school, go outside and play or to
practice doing anything.
I don’t want to clean toilets, do
laundry, make dinner, or run errands. I don’t want to go to bed, wake up,
exercise, or blow my hair dry. I don’t want to pay bills, and I sure
don’t want to go out in the yard to pull weeds.
But hold on. Slow up.
Take a breath.
Just forget for a minute that these
are my children and that I am their role model.
Why don’t I – we – want to?
Is it because we don’t want others telling us what to do, or because we don’t
like to be controlled by outside forces, or because the job is boring, or
thankless, or stupid, or – heaven forbid – good for us?
Do you know what I want to
do? Well you probably don’t, but believe me – I’ve tried it. It
gets old, fast.
The things I should do – must do –
are always present, and they are there to make life interesting, and
productive, and beneficial.
It’s a hard lesson for some of us,
those of us who are wired a little more loosely than others. (Or tightly,
depending on your perspective) I don’t want to because I feel put out by
the things I have to do, that I am somehow missing something else because of
the priority things – the work I must do. I spent all day washing clothes
and now I don’t have time to do anything else that might be fun. FOR ME.
It’s selfishness, really. A
character flaw.
I resist change at an
inconsequential level. Tell me that tomorrow we’ll be doing something in
a month, but please don’t tell me that you’re coming home late….. Both of the
kids have places to go or things to do and they haven’t approved human cloning
yet, and I’m definitely holding out on that before asking anyone
to help out. Also, that stuff I need to get rid of can sit in the garage
for a few more weeks, can’t it? Getting rid of things is a lot of
work. A LOT of work.
And I don’t want to do it.
The realization that my kids
mirror what they see in me, and that my job is to teach them otherwise, is a scary
thought. This is my parenting fail. This is where I’ve messed them
up forever.
I apologize, future spouses of my
children. (I guess I should begin
working on this!)
It’s also the point at which I no
longer freak out when they refuse to do something. “I don’t want to”
elicits not a surprise reaction, nor anger, nor much emotion at all
anymore. I ask them to verbalize why they don’t want to, and let the
reasons play out and dribble away.
We don’t want to, but that’s not
an option most of the time. Getting them to see it that way is hard, but I
think eventually they will.
Whether
or not they want to, that is.
