This is one of the few golden rules of my parenting. A rule that monitors the daily, most ordinary (seemingly – completely unimportant) choices.
– “Mom, can I make a house of pillows and a blanket on the living room?”
– “No.”
– “Mom, shall we bake cookies today?”
– “No, not today.”
– “Can I invite a friend over today?”
– “No, maybe some other time.”
Children have lots of ideas to make each of their days more wonderful. And by some strange twist of fate, all these ideas usually steal your time, the order in your surroundings, the harmony of your inner self, which you cultivate with such care day after day .
…because, after all, you’ve just cleaned up and you want your home, if only for a moment, to look tidy, like in all those catalogs you flip through dreaming of the most beautiful home in the world.
…because you’ve just finished cooking and washing dishes, and the kitchen sparkles, and you have some free time. For yourself. Now get out the flour, eggs, butter and play with kneading the dough? And then there’s that punching out endless amounts of cookies and the scraps of leftover dough rolling around the table, floor and chairs! At your own request, you have a pile of dirty dishes and sticky countertops in the kitchen again in no time. This nightmarish vision forces you to quickly answer “no.”
And still when the child invites a friend, the confusion, disorder and chaos will double at lightning speed.
But… I once read in a wise book that it’s worth keeping “ammunition” for the things that are really important. Because if we ban all the little things too often and don’t allow the most ordinary ideas to be implemented, then when a really important topic comes up, related to health, safety, morality – they won’t ask anymore, much less listen.
So I tried to remember this rule in my daily surprises: “Mom, can I…?”
And although it didn’t always work out for me, each time the words came back in my thoughts like an echo: “Don’t say NO when you can say YES.”
