I've decided that I'm going to share parenting advice in my blog once in awhile. No, not because I'm a parent. And no, we're not expecting. But because once in awhile I people-watch and I notice things, and I want to log my mental notes as parenting advice for myself down the road. And also because I want to for the readers of our blog who are parents to be able to read these entries and then shake their heads and say, "So naïve... he'll learn..."As I sat alone in a restaurant on Tuesday evening, to my left was a family with 2 young children — a boy and a girl probably 3 and 4 years old. In front of me sat a mom with her two kids — a boy and a girl probably 7 and 8 years old. I noticed the families because... every kid was getting on his/her sibling's nerves. There was yelling about crayons because he was eating a crayon or because she got three crayons and it's not fair. There was spitefulness over accidents because one kid bumped his shoulder into a wall and the other kid thought he was stupid for doing so. There was whining about food because if she gets a milkshake then I should get french fries.
My gut instinct as a parent would be to separate my two children... pretty much for the rest of their lives. Clearly they get on each other's nerves. And I would much rather have peace and quiet. One family did that eventually... they sat at two separate tables. The other family stayed together and just endured a lot of yelling.
As I reflected more on this... keeping my kids apart — just to have peace — is not much of a solution. Maybe for discipline, or to give time for tempers to cool... ok. But if I teach my kids, "If you two can't get along, then sit at different tables..." then I am not preparing them for the harsh reality of grownup-ness that says, "Sometimes you must sit at the same table, so you had better work on working it out."
When you grow up, you can't just sit at separate tables if it's... your wife, or your co-worker, or your dad, or your neighbor, or the guy that sits next to you on a Sunday morning. Separation is not a solution. I hope I will learn this in my grownup-ness, and I hope that my kids learn this too.
