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Toddlers & Liberals, pt 2 (or so)
May. 24th, 2013 12:37 amFirst of all, a big shout-out and "Thank you!" to Bookworm at Bookwormroom.com for her lavish praise about my last post. I'm still blushing. I guess the inspiration for it came from having lived most my life, like Bookworm, in a place where people are overwhelmingly politically liberal. For all their talk about caring about others, when one tries to (non-politically) bring up a topic where someone has been done an injustice (because you'd think, "hey, those caring liberals"), the response is usually a pat, "Well, sucks to be them" or "I'm glad it's not me!", which pretty much ends the conversation.
But here's the real post: :)
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About an hour after lunch the other day, I went into the kitchen to fix myself some tea, and Asher followed me, wanting a treat.
Now, he had eaten really well at lunch, saving no room for a treat right after lunch, so I had no problem giving him a treat at this point.
Tabitha, seeing this, asked me, "Mommy, can I have some candy like Asher?"
I replied, "No. He didn't have his treat right after lunch, so he's having it now. You had Sweet Tarts."
She interrupted me, "No, not Sweet Tarts. Bottle caps. And I didn't have any bottle caps."
At this point, I really wanted to laugh, but it took some doing to calm her down and to explain again why she wasn't getting a piece of candy at this point in the day. Children, by nature, are self-centered. It's a part of self-preservation. As children get older, though, it's the responsibility of the parents to teach children a code of morality, at the very least. However, at her age, she still basically understands right and wrong as "this is a yes-yes" and "this is a no-no" in the sense of things that she is or is not allowed to do. When it comes to things like answering my question about whether she already had candy, she understands that how she answers will bring about one of two results - a "good" result and a "bad" result. By saying she has not had candy, she is hoping for the "good" result. At her age, I don't even think it's quite fair to call it lying.
During the first Presidential debate in 2012, Mitt Romney made a hard-hitting point that just because somebody repeats something over and over again, as children do, it doesn't make it true. Yet it seems like there are more and more adults that have never lost that self-centeredness, and have never learned the morality in the difference between a right and a wrong answer, and answers which they hope will produce a "good" outcome or a "bad" outcome. My opinion is that this is probably why we have so many shameless pathological liars these days - and the sad thing is that they're probably not even aware anymore of what the truth is. (Could this also be called "result-oriented approach"?)
But here's the real post: :)
_____________________________________
About an hour after lunch the other day, I went into the kitchen to fix myself some tea, and Asher followed me, wanting a treat.
Now, he had eaten really well at lunch, saving no room for a treat right after lunch, so I had no problem giving him a treat at this point.
Tabitha, seeing this, asked me, "Mommy, can I have some candy like Asher?"
I replied, "No. He didn't have his treat right after lunch, so he's having it now. You had Sweet Tarts."
She interrupted me, "No, not Sweet Tarts. Bottle caps. And I didn't have any bottle caps."
At this point, I really wanted to laugh, but it took some doing to calm her down and to explain again why she wasn't getting a piece of candy at this point in the day. Children, by nature, are self-centered. It's a part of self-preservation. As children get older, though, it's the responsibility of the parents to teach children a code of morality, at the very least. However, at her age, she still basically understands right and wrong as "this is a yes-yes" and "this is a no-no" in the sense of things that she is or is not allowed to do. When it comes to things like answering my question about whether she already had candy, she understands that how she answers will bring about one of two results - a "good" result and a "bad" result. By saying she has not had candy, she is hoping for the "good" result. At her age, I don't even think it's quite fair to call it lying.
During the first Presidential debate in 2012, Mitt Romney made a hard-hitting point that just because somebody repeats something over and over again, as children do, it doesn't make it true. Yet it seems like there are more and more adults that have never lost that self-centeredness, and have never learned the morality in the difference between a right and a wrong answer, and answers which they hope will produce a "good" outcome or a "bad" outcome. My opinion is that this is probably why we have so many shameless pathological liars these days - and the sad thing is that they're probably not even aware anymore of what the truth is. (Could this also be called "result-oriented approach"?)
