Pokemon is now of the wayside and Beyblades has been Everett’s toy trend for the last several months. I think Eli first got really into it (much like the Pokemon trend) and as Eli is Everett’s best friend, Everett is now also crazy over Beyblades.
There’s this Beyblade called Ultra Cognite who is apparently awesome, and Everett had been waiting months for after ordering it from China. Beyblades run around $15 here in Canada, and this one was definitely a good buy on paper.
It did take a couple of months to arrive, and Everett learned about shipping, tracking and how items get stuck in customs. But finally it arrived!
And as much as I never want Everett or Sierra to be disappointed, at some time or another I know my child will be, and I think such situations are as much a test of the parent as the child.
Petits enfants, petits problèmes. This was probably Everett’s biggest anticipation and biggest letdown, and he was very upset about it (at least at first). As a parent, I thought this was good learning, and we talked about how things might turn out not to be what you’d expect. We talked about what we could do, and we ended up making a little video review of the product. Everett at first wanted to order a different one immediately, but we talked about what if the second one was just as bad or worse, or if it was more expensive, then we’d be out even more money.
But as he gets older, what other disappointments is he bound to face?
Is it going to be about friendships, like how there was the time when Everett, Eli and Harrison had the two against one friendship dynamic. On another occasion, Everett accidentally saw that he was left out when all his friends on the block wheeled up the street together in a car on the way out to play. More challenging relationship issues will no doubt surface as time goes on, and I can only anticipate what drama Sierra might wrought within her social circle.
At this age, I think the kids play well with many different friends, and I can’t say they have any enemies at this point. Of course we try to teach how to be a good friend – sharing, not pushing and fighting, including others. But at the same time I try not to be a deus ex machina and have to let them work things out for themselves.
Other settings like school and dealing with teachers, competition and sports will later become factors too. Already some of our friends helicopter, getting involved with classroom assignments. I hope never to do that, but allow Everett and Sierra to navigate life on their own good and bad. I can’t imagine the situations that arise that would prompt a parent to fight teachers or coaches, and I hope we never to have to experience something that would bring such conflicts on. I hope to be able to talk to our kids about options when these conflicts arise and help them sort it out that way.
Sometimes the powers dictating circumstances will be beyond the kids. Is this the time where the parent is supposed to intervene, to even the playing field? But then, life has never been fair and I think the better lesson to teach is that while you try to make the world fair for everyone, you still have to manage when life is unfair to you. How does one help build a child’s resilience? How does one teach a child to succeed without complaining?
Since Everett was two or so, I kept repeating telling him this hokey saying I read somewhere about liking challenges. “I like challenges,” I’d say about myself, and then launch into some story real or made up about overcoming a challenge when I was a kid. The kids like to hear stories about when we parents were kids. Other times I’d make a statement like “You like challenges, Everett.” I don’t know if this will actually work, but I hope that when he’s faced with some obstacle, he will look at it and consider it a challenge that he could take a stab at. In my endeavour to be more “handy” when something breaks (despite Shannon’s eye rolls), I break out the tools and make a show to the kids that I try to fix it. When I am working on a difficult passage on a piano piece, I tell Everett that I am doing exactly what I tell him to do: slow down and repeat the difficult parts until I get it. Maybe a part of it is showing kids that adults have challenges too and it’s the attitude that one takes when a challenge is encountered.
The tough part I think about is when there is some curriculum or requirement that comes up in school that I might not agree with. One such is example is discovery math. Ok, maybe some kids like it, but from what I understand, math scores have plummeted since its introduction, and being old school and also Asian, I can’t in good conscience forgo basics such as the efficient mechanics of carryover addition, long division and rote memorization of the multiplication tables. If it comes to that, I think one the one hand the kids will have to learn what the school (ie. society) requires them to learn, but also, what I require them to learn. And although some people balk at the commitment and time required for this, I am more than happy to home school them these material.
In the end, I hope we are able to be good guides for Everett and Sierra along the journey of growing up. At the same time, I already know their effect on me has been incredible as I learn how to be a good parent.
