Don't listen to your kids

This morning our daughter came in “to cuddle” sometime long before seven a.m. In our household, this is against the rules. On weekends, she needs to wait till 7 a.m. before she can interrupt her parents’ beauty sleep.

Groggily, her daddy said, It’s not seven o’clock yet. Go back to bed.

She went away. It was like a miracle, but we were too tired to care.

Later she came back. It was after seven and I invited her in to cuddle. As is our custom, I started to talk about our day. I covered the farmer’s market, then got to the part I knew she’d be really excited about.

“Then you and Daddy are going to have some special time together.”

“I don’t want to go with Daddy. I don’t like Daddy. I want to stay with you.”

Before I had children, I probably would have considered that a statement of truth, something I should listen to and consider. After I had my rather more easygoing son, I might have thought, well, I should consider that it might just be his mood. But now that I’ve had my daughter, I’ve realized that there is one statement that just doesn’t make any sense: Listen to the children!

Kids are mercurial. They have motives that make no sense to adults. They see a goal and get there in what we would consider the most obviously ridiculous way. Sometimes they say things with great emphasis that they will deny saying later. Sometimes they say things that actually mean something quite different than you might expect.

Now I’m talking to those of you who think you should always take what your child says as a true expression of their feelings: You may make a habit of believing that everything your child says has some sort of meaning that you can get from it. You may be thinking: Perhaps my daughter has deeply buried feelings of antipathy to her father. Perhaps she really needs her mother on this day. Perhaps it will hurt her deeply that I don’t take her feelings seriously.

But here’s the reality. She said, “I don’t like Daddy,” and I said, “OK, honey” in a non-committal way. By the time it was time for her and her father to leave, she had forgotten all about it. What she said probably had meaning at the time, but it really didn’t mean something the way an adult would mean something. It meant something like, “Right now I hate you but in five minutes you will be my very best friend,” the way that kids have been doing with each other for eons.

I’m guessing that there is some deep, genetic meaning to this behavior. I bet someone smarter than me could figure it out. But all I know is this: if I just say, “OK, honey” in a non-committal way, that opens up the rest of the day to happen as it will.

If I try to convince her to change her opinion, or if I act on that firmly expressed opinion, that’s when the trouble starts.

I’m not saying that I don’t listen to my children, really. I do listen to them, and I do consider whether what they’re saying has any greater meaning in their lives. But frankly, so much of what they say just happens to be a fleeting thought. Some months ago, my son thought it was the most important thing in life to be able to buy a computer from One Laptop Per Child. He was obsessed with it! It was so fabulously important that he be part of this great connecting of humanity!

He never did get that laptop, and he has long since forgotten it. Other things have become the Most Important Thing, and perhaps by the time he wakes up tomorrow, something else will take its place.

I remember a time when I was a child that The Most Important Thing was that I would get a horse. Never mind that I was terrified of horses, that the only times I’d been on them they’d never done what I asked. That I had no place to keep a horse, and that I had no interest in hauling myself to a stable every day to take care of a horse. I Had To Have A Horse.

I remember this clearly. I don’t remember what came before or after that thought, just that one day the thought was gone, and I had other absolutely important goals that had to be taken care of Right Then. No negotiation, no reasoning. There was a time in my life when fleeting feelings were paramount.

So I do honor my children’s feelings… sometimes. I try to take care not to hurt them by openly rejecting their feelings. I have developed (probably modeled on my mother) a sort of casual, disinterested tone. “Oh, really?” I might say. “That’s an interesting idea.”

If it’s something they’re truly passionate about, it will last for more than a minute.

FYI: My daughter did go with her father to have special time. She returned happy, full of stories, and not at all interested in cuddling with me. Right Then And There there were some sowbugs that had to be caught. It was The Most Important Thing.

Don’t you understand anything, Mommy?