Children create traditions out of anything. If you serve
them ice cream on Friday once, it becomes Ice Cream Friday. If you hug them
before you send them to bed, they moan “Where’s the hug?” the next night. What if you go to the beach
on the Fourth of July?
Or if you buy them a candy bar while grocery shopping? These
events or items quickly become the special treat or memory they are entitled
to, until you can argue successfully that it’s only on certain days or times or
paydays. Relatives can drop by and the movie plans are scrapped, a tire blows
and the money for Pizza Night gets sucked into car repairs, etc. Children do
not like inconsistency, so it’s a tough battle sometimes to get them understand
that “things happen”.
Occasionally, though, it’s also true that adults fall into a
rut of maturity that begs “things happen… so give in, just ‘go with the flow’”.
This resolution is an adult rite because we tacitly agree that we have no
control anyway. It makes us adults a little pathetic and useless in the imagination
department. Yet, recently, my son reminded me recently that there’s a yin to
that yang.
My son woke up late on a Saturday when I was organizing a
speech tournament for our school. He
felt bad about that, so he guiltily helped me at the tournament. This emotion, I think, was the seed of despair
which exploded later in the day.
