The Rumination Rooms: My Kid Is An Asshole!

My daughter is frustrating me today.

It seems like every five minutes she wants something that only I can provide to ensure her day-to-day existence remains stress-free and entertaining.

It's not that she wants things. That I can handle. It's that she has interrupted me three times since I started trying to write this post, first because she wanted a glass of iced tea, then because she though we should play, and this latest time because she can't get past the first three minutes of her DS game.

And it's always with the whine in her voice.

My kid is an asshole.

As a mother, my job is to make sure she turns into a decent human being. And I'm trying. But most kids are naturally assholes.

Sadly, my kid has gotten the message that she should be entertained 24/7 coming at her continually from a large part of society.

I feel that there are a lot of forces at work in the world that are turning people into total jerks. In my daughter's case, she's largely been raised by her grandmother or the daycare ladies while I was busy trying to bring in enough extra income to keep everyone fed and the whole family financially afloat.

In the daycare my daughter attended, the children are never told no. There is a multitude of activities to keep children busy all day long, and should a child have an issue with another, or grow bored with the activity they are doing, they are simply directed elsewhere.

Now, I'm all for keeping children engaged and involved, but it strikes me as setting a dangerous precedent; a precedent where children do not learn how to control their emotions, or focus their attention on a task that they deem less than scintillating. And in the real world, the world that they will have to grow up and interact in, those skills are essential.

We are raising our children to be ego-centric dickheads. Some of them are already walking around today, and we wonder why they're having zero success when we told them how smart and wonderful they were growing up, only to have them discover that the real world doesn't really give a shit that they were like, really freaking good at making friendship bracelets in 7th grade.

Amateurs. I can make one with like a whole eight strings. And patterns.

Now, being no saint in the "Let's distract the little shits so I can watch my shows" department, I'm not entirely innocent here. I love my electronics. I love how the tablet can occupy my kid when I really need to focus on writing or when I have to make an important phone call. I love how I can sit her down with Lego Star Wars on the DS and it makes car rides pain free. I love how she always wants to use my cell phone to play games when I have it out... Wait, no, I hate that shit. That is my toy.

But electronic babysitters also teach kids that they should be entertained all the time, right from waking up to going to sleep. That isn't the case. There's got to be a healthy balance. Kids need to develop real work ethic, and figure out how to find satisfaction in a job well done, even if it's a job they don't particularly enjoy or find all that fun.

Which is why, after I'd worked for twenty minutes-feeling guilty for yelling at her to figure out the game or put it down the whole time-I told her she would be helping me do the dishes and if we got them all done, we could make rice crispy cake after, but only if she did the dishes without fussing.

And you know what?

...

The little shit loved doing the dishes.