Sometimes I think it’s a shame when we look at the over-simplified world of our children and dismiss their rosy views as “cute” or “sweet.” When my daughter articulates her own foreign policy espousing that “we can help bad guys become good by giving them fish tanks with real fish in them,” it makes me smile and, just for a second, it makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard on the matter of bad guys. But this isn’t about how the world would be a better place with more fish and fewer guns. It’s about how, no matter what, you should never tell a four-year-old that there is a store called Destroy-A-Bear where kids take their stuffed animals to be disemboweled. –Trust me on this. That little “concept” will not go down as one of my proudest moments in fatherhood.
Of course when you think about it, the premise of parenthood has us basically doomed from the get-go. All you have to do to be a successful parent is to teach your child how not to act like a grown-up while teaching them to act like grown-ups because we want them to be ready for our grown-up world, but we don’t want them to emulate our grown-up world because, if we do it right, they will be better grown-ups than we are and, thus, their grown-up world will be smarter and more peaceful than the world which we don’t want them to have in the first place. It really is that simple.
And we seem to tackle this confusion by breaking down our parenting into three assumptions, all of which are conflicted, confusing and mostly valid.
1. We work hard to shelter our children from a world that no longer seems to place raising children as our top priority, but…
2. We expose our children to what we think they need to know in order to be successful in our “adult” world, so…
3. We try to instill within them a “blueprint” for an ideal world where the “Golden Rule” is still a rule and not an exception even though our world is inundated with exceptions.
In my daughter’s world there is a utopian paradise of joy and harmony where sweet little girls can choose from an endless variety of “pelts” which they bring to life through a warm series of incantations, stuffing machines and lovingly-placed hearts. At the end of her visit, she is way too busy opening and closing her bear/cat/dog’s new cardboard carry box to notice my wife or me handing over large sums of money for this magical happening. We’ve only been to Build-A-Bear twice, but that was more than enough for my daughter to imprint every detail. My daughter is like a little flatulent navigation system when it comes to her favorite stores. As a result, a merciless barrage of “Are we going to Build-A-Bear?” questioning begins at the freeway exit and ceases only after her parents’ breaking points have been reached. One day it went like this:
“Are we going to Build-A-Bear?”
“No honey, not today.”
“I’ve got an idea. Why don’t Mommy and I go to Build-A-Bear, and you and Andrew can go to Home Depot.”
“No honey.”
“But what if we go to Build-A-Bear on the way home?”
“We said ‘no’”
“What if we go to Build-A-Bear and not buy anything?”
“No! We are not going to Build-A-Bear!”
“But I’ve got a good idea…”
“I’ve got an idea too, why don’t we go to Destroy-A-Bear?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a new store where you take your animals and they pull all the stuffing out of them.”
Silence…
Long period of wailing…
Was I any less frustrated, I would have taken her straight to Build-A-Bear out of sheer guilt. I’m glad I didn’t though. I’m not going to reward my kid because her father can be a sarcastic jerk sometimes. And she sure wasn’t an innocent by-stander in the whole exchange. Our compromise was that we would all go to Home Depot: a utopian paradise of joy and harmony where the aisles are draped in tools and endless derivations of wood. Anytime a compromise involves going to Home Depot, everybody wins -especially Daddy! Which, in the long run, may make me quite a hypocrite. Not really though, it’s our job as mothers and fathers to entice and lure children into practical stores, like Home Depot, Party Mart and Gun World. In the long run, our motives are all the same. We just want to get to where we want to go with the minimal amount of hassle. Parent or child, sometimes it’s all about manipulation. We’re just a lot better at it than they are. Besides, Home Depot was where we were headed in the first place.
She doesn’t mention Build-A-Bear much anymore. I’m afraid that a quick dose of frustrated sarcasm helped usher the demise of an innocent, albeit superficial, childhood icon. I want to think she’s just moved on; Wal-Mart’s Barbie section has recently come into favor. Nevertheless, I’ve gotten over it. Childhood icons should never be rooted in consumerism. I am very much looking forward to Barbie sinking into oblivion as well but not as the result of a mean-spirited comment from a fed-up parent.
Rather, the whole “Destroy-A-Bear” incident, and countless others like it seem to define a fourth assumption we parents today operate under when raising children: The ends justify the means. When we forgo appropriate methods in order to produce a desired effect, we set a bad precedent that actions aren’t governed by values but rather dictated by potential outcomes. It sounds rather dramatic in the context of a teddy bear store, but remember that a child’s acquisition of values isn’t limited to certified “teachable moments,” but is a formative process during which all our actions, words and connotations are closely monitored and accepted as norms. How often are responses to our children’s inquiries peppered with frustration and misguided aggression? Being mean on an abstract level does not absolve one of being mean. And just because children can’t fully comprehend sarcasm doesn’t mean that they can’t sense the cruelty behind it.
Besides, it’s very frustrating that I’ll never be able to fully appreciate the “Destroy-a-Bear” concept. My friend Dale thought it was hilarious.
“But I’m not stupid enough to tell my kids about it,” he added.
Good friends like Dale are hard to find.