Let’s all be honest for a moment – sometimes your kid talks and you don’t really pay attention to them. Instead of doing all those things they tell you a “good” parent does you instead say, “Uh-huh”, “Sure”, or “Yep”. I would say that a solid 90% of the time this is a strategy that works out just fine. You avoid listening to another set of deep thoughts on Shopkins or Elmo without telling your kid they are boring you to death and no one really cares.
But they other 10% of the time……..now that is when you get into parenting trouble. You miss something actually important buried in some mundane story that makes your ears want to bleed, you agree to something you didn’t want to do, or you do what I do yesterday and give your kid completely inaccurate and false information.
Yesterday we had a few folks over to hunt Easter Eggs. Per normal I made too much food. Someone was teasing me about my compulsion to make more food than we could possibly eat. My 6 year old asked me what compulsion meant and we told her an obsession or something you can keep yourself from doing and thought case closed.
We were then cleaning up after everyone left and she asked about compulsion again. We were cleaning up and I was tired so I half heartedly repeated my earlier answer. This followed:
“Then why is Jet’s last name Compulsion. What is he obsessed with?”
“Yeah I don’t know”
“Maybe it is because he is obsessed with science. He has a compulsion to keep doing science.”
“Sure – sounds great to me”
“Good we have figured it out Jet’s last name is Compulsion because he is obsessed with and can’t stop doing science.”
You non-PBS kids watchers are probably asking yourself what was wrong with that exchange. I will tell you what is wrong. What is wrong is that I woke up this morning and realized his last name is Propulsion not Compulsion. So do you say something, hope she forgets, or wait to see if it comes up again?