Life on the Lakefront
I am continuously asked, mostly rhetorically, about how to raise children. Raising children is a lot like raising cabbages except that it takes a lot longer, costs a lot more and involves cleaning up manure instead of spreading it out. It is probably the biggest single job anyone can do, and is among the most important, right up there with planting a flag on the moon and nearly equal to scoring the winning goal in the NBA championship game.
Parents are called upon to fill many different roles; doctor, counselor, janitor, personal chef, chauffer, and of course antagonist. This calls on the parent to have well-developed skills in a number of different areas and key among these is what the experts refer to as emotional intelligence.
The concept of emotional intelligence is akin to a sense of self-control and self-awareness all rolled up into one. You see kids do not need a parent that comes emotionally apart in the face of minor emergencies such as the kid setting the house on fire. After all what about the real emergencies, like when their boyfriend breaks up with them or when their sister kidnaps their stuffed bear ties it to the toilet and holds it for ransom, what about then? That is when you come apart. It is in these situations where the truly emotionally intelligent parent, because of years of observation and almost the powers of the parental wisdom gene, knows exactly what to do, hide in the garage with a beer and let their mother handle it.
During the 1960’s a famous psychological experiment was done with children to illustrate the concept of emotional intelligence. Children were offered a change for one marshmallow immediately or two if they could wait for twenty minutes. Those who took the single marshmallow were labeled as less emotionally intelligent, those who waited the twenty minutes were labeled as more emotionally intelligent, and the kid that sat fire to the room and stole the whole bag when no one was looking, well I like to think I was precocious.
Yes, it is a difficult path that lies ahead of most parents, a path that is often a rocky road filled with emotional outbursts, hysterics, and tears. Sometimes this is made even worse when the kid is upset too.
One problem is that kids do not have problems based on some timetable; you really can’t plan for them. You may think you see hypothetical sharks in the water, hypothetically circling, but you can never be sure when they are going to hypothetically attack, and rip off your hypothetical leg. This can occur even at the most inopportune time, like in the last thirty seconds of the championship game, and children’s emergencies will not wait even if you give them two or even three marshmallows. No, you have to get up and do something, call your wife.
The challenge for parents is clear. Learn to maintain emotional calmness, self-control, and good hiding skills. And, stock up on beer in the garage.
