On GMA this morning, they ran a fluff
story about parents who decided to “cancel” Christmas for their three young
boys. I’m torn about whether to admire them for their stick-to-it-iveness or
view them as child abusers.
Who hasn't threatened this? This couple's actually doing it! Amazing! While I'm tempted to follow suit, I'm afraid I don't have the Christmas balls for it. Or maybe it goes deeper than my backbone or lack therof. *adopts Grinch voice* Cancelling Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
Granted, I am a lenient parent. It stems from being the product of one overprotective parent and one who
suffered a mental illness. My mother was on a mission to keep anything bad from
happening a la Marlin from Finding Nemo, and my father was often in a fugue
state. That’s right, he sometimes acted like a zombie, i.e., sitting in a
trance, not paying attention to anything going on around him. He was in a world
of his own. One time, in order to demonstrate this eccentricity, I jumped over
him while he was watching TV. The friend hanging out with me that day thought it
was hysterical, and I got that thrill one always gets in successfully
entertaining an audience. My father didn’t flinch.
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| Not much fun for little Elmo. |
It never occurred to me how
cruel my actions were. I was just a kid--typically a very good kid--maybe around eleven years old and at the mercy of some forces I didn't understand. (No one told me about my father's mental condition, for instance.) I still should’ve been nicer that day. I don’t know what
got into me.
Based on reading this, you’ll probably
dismiss any parenting advice I can give. But I’ll argue that being the daughter of
a man who suffered multiple mental breakdowns and at least as many suicide attempts over
the course of my youth makes me a better, far more understanding parent. Besides,
anyone can give parenting advice. So there.
And
as an officially screwed-up child who grew to be a mediocre mom who--to her credit--tries like
hell to be an awesome one, I advise these parents to reconsider their decision. Grinch parenting is as effective as Finding Nemo parenting = Not Very. If you really want to teach your kids the meaning of Christmas, I would go a less punitive route. Take it from someone who once doled out an overzealous punishment, and has lived to regret it.
About eight years ago, my daughter got
reamed in kindergarten for eating the “special snack” of a child with allergies. (Gluten, I think.) Kindergarten was a horrible year for us. I knew it would be a hard transition, because my older daughter had gone through it a few years before. It's the perfect storm of factors that can cause kids apprehension. The teachers
are getting to know the children. The children are acclimating to school, some
of them without the benefit of having attended pre-school. Patience is a must
in most instances—which is why most kindergarten teachers are the cream of the
crop, chosen specifically to ease the burden of transition and establish a good
impression of school and a firm routine.
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| The snack thief, eight years later. |
My middle daughter’s kindergarten career
posed even more challenges than usual. The personality of her teacher didn’t
meld well with hers, for one thing. I came to find out years later that the
teacher was basically just teaching kindergarten because she wanted the part-time
schedule to be home with her young daughter. (I know this,
because she told me so, in those exact words.) And my older daughter has since had the teacher for a higher grade, which made it clear that some of the
problems were not entirely my middle daughter’s fault, but resulted instead from this particular teacher's method of dealing with strong personalities.
Back to the Snack Incident. The
kindergarten teacher lost it. She called me in, sat me down with my daughter
and read us the riot act. We were stoic through the onslaught. How could my
daughter steal the snack (a bag of cookies) from a child who is already
suffering from the stigma of not being able to participate in birthday treats
and regular snack time? How could I just be sitting there, not disciplining her?
Don’t I see how cruel and calculating this is? How could I sleep at night
knowing my daughter had done this?
That same week, a group of boys snuck a
peanut-butter-smeared item onto the placemat of a child suffering peanut
allergies and the administration laughed that incident off as a
harmless lunchtime prank. (To me it sounded like attempted murder, but what did I know? I was raising the Anti-Christ.) Since the
ranting to which I was subjected echoed what the pre-school teachers had said
the prior year, I figured my daughter was a snotty, entitled brat. The
teacher suggested “severe consequences” while skewering me with her one good
eye. (A glare seems more effective from a one-eyed person, doesn't it?) I took her advice to
heart.
At the time, my daughter was in a
horseback riding class offered through community education. My husband had
coached kiddie soccer and received a voucher, which we used for the class. I decided
to withhold her next horseback riding session. That would teach her a lesson
about stealing snacks from poor unsuspecting gluten-free kids, I thought. This
course of action would certainly please the one-eyed teacher. (I’m a pleaser,
did I mention that?) Worst. Decision. Ever.
I took my daughter to the horseback riding
class so she could explain to the instructor in her own words why she wouldn’t
be in class. There were tears from my daughter, a befuddled look from the instructor,
trauma, despair-filled whinnying, snickerings from the other kids (or maybe
that was the horses, too). It was horrible. Essentially I punished MYSELF.
Now, I don’t know what the children of The
Grinch parents did to bring on a cancellation of Christmas, but it should be
more than simply being bratty. Everyone’s bratty. Everyone. Some grow out of it. Some don't. And, if you haven’t
noticed, most people are also losing the meaning of Christmas.
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| How come they got to park on the street? |
Let me tell another story from my
overly-punitive past. My mother didn’t like cars parked on the street in front
of the house. The rule was I could park my car in the street all day, enabling
her to get in and out of the driveway, but in the evening I had to pull it off
the street. Which meant I had to get up the next morning and move it before my
father left for work. We affectionately called this The Suburban Shuffle. One
night I didn’t feel like moving the car. I was either too lazy, too tired, or I’d
figured out that if I parked it on the street (where everyone else parked, by
the way), I could sleep in later than 6 a.m., which is when my father would
have to leave. I worked at a department store and rarely had to get there
before 8.
That night a vandal came through our
neighborhood and shot out people’s windows with a b.b. gun. He had chosen
random cars to take out—mine and a few of the neighbors’, all the way around
the block. The next morning, I walked out to my car to find the window in
shards. I was devastated. I knew it would be expensive to replace, and it was
also a mess to clean up.
My parents gave me no sympathy. You can
imagine what they said: if I’d parked in the driveway, like they’d suggested,
my car would’ve been spared. What lesson did that teach me? To listen always to
my parents? No (Thank God, because sometimes my parents made mistakes and this
incident actually made me trust them less.) That I had control over bad things?
No. What it taught me was to fear the unknown. It taught me that I couldn’t
rely on my parents for support in times of need. If I asked for help, I’d be
accused of bringing my own problems upon me. Note: The punishment was rendered
not by my parents but by the FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE, emancipating my mom and
dad from the title of “the bad guys”, although they deemed the punishment
fitting with their attitudes.
How does this parallel the boys losing Christmas, you might ask? Obviously, in this case the parents are the bad guys. What if my parents decided to sneak out at night and shoot a b.b. gun at my poor Sunbird for the purpose of teaching me a lesson? No one would support that but isn't it--in a sense--the equivalent of the way these parents are holding their kids up as examples? It might not be as bad as staking skulls on swords outside the castle wall (Game of Thrones moment)...okay I'm gonna drop this allegory in the middle of a sentence. All I'm saying is it's very hard to resist the lure of the distorted view of Christmas that ADULTS have helped propagate.
I’ve had problems and obstacles since my
car windows got shot out, some of which I might’ve “brought on myself” and some
that just happened. They happened regardless of whether or not I followed every
rule to the letter. Just as Christmas comes without ribbons, tags, packages,
boxes or bags. Christmas, you see, is a similar force with the same potential to
be negative or positive. It certainly depends on the perceptions of people experiencing it, but it's also a powerful tradition steeped in history and myth. Unfortunately, it has morphed into a strange cultural hybrid: a multi-billion dollar industry, a
political conundrum, observed legally but defined by laws of etiquette that make it wrong to express Christian sentiments in the same public buildings that close their doors for the holiday. Giving these children the incorrect
impression that they can somehow control this cluster of confusion that Christmas has
become is wrong and damaging.
Let me note here that I think this is a
GREAT idea (check it out on this blog) if it isn’t tied back to the kids’ behavior. Parents who sit their children down and explain that society in general has lost
perspective and that’s trickling down to the family, so they’ve decided not to
do a big thing this year have my full support.
If not handled this way, I fear that withholding Christmas
might actually bring more attention
to the consumerism aspect. The kids’ goals for next year will most likely include “earning”
their presents back. And what if they behave like angels, yet their dad or mom loses
his or her job and the family can’t afford the presents that allegedly correlate to their
improved behavior? What lesson will that teach?
Of course, it will be all-out brilliant if
next year the boys insist upon the exact same scaled-back celebration, preferring it to the bigger extravaganza. I will gladly eat my words if that happens. Only time will tell.
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| Just imagine Mr. Rogers on there. No! |
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