Any other parents out there have the annoying habit of turning everything into a lecture?
Who can start with an innocuous plot point in a TV drama and end with The Reason Why The World Is This Way?
Of seeing educational moments everywhere that — in your kids’ minds — last droning educational hours?
I do, apparently.
But I don’t get credit for all of the times I don’t, for the incredible restraint I have shown when, for instance, a comment about not having any clean pants does not come with the rejoinder about the potential correlation to the Leaning Tower of Laundry threatening to swamp the bedroom.
For I know that natural consequences are better teachers, and when that time — that one golden and admittedly only time — that the laundry found its way downstairs without any nagging was worth the mid-tongue bite marks.
But sometimes I can’t help myself.
It started with an innocent conversation about a certain show: The fan I live with described the characters as being the victims of expectations.
“But can’t expectations be good things? I pushed. “Don’t other people see things in us that we’re not aware of, or not confident about ourselves? And can’t that belief encourage us to do things we wouldn’t have otherwise? Expectations don’t have to be negative …”
I launched off, warming to the subject as if sautéing it in olive oil as part of a three-course meal of nourishing wisdom that my child could dine out on long into adulthood, perhaps one day serving it to their own progeny.
But a leaden sigh stopped me short.
“Mom, why do you always make small conversations into big ones? Can’t we just talk about this thing, this show, without it going deeper than that?”
Oh. Right. Sure.
The funny thing is, when I launched off, I wasn’t even completely sold on the benefits of expectations. I know well their dark side, like the stressful ones depicted in the show. Some expectations can keep you traveling down a road to a place you don’t belong or want to be. The dangers that can come of feeling trapped on that road or beating yourself up for falling short while on it. Or worse, not experiencing the joy and relief of defying expectations and cutting the trail that’s truest to you.
I would’ve gotten to this nugget eventually. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to that part of the “conversation” before that mic drop-truth bomb showed me our talk wasn’t quite as two-way as I’d imagined. Guess I’ll just have to wait for the next educational moment to come around — there are 1,440 minutes in a day after all.
Still, this one, gleaned from me cleaving to expectations of a parent saying things a parent might say, and my kid serving up a portion of on-its-face truth, defied expectations — and tasted sweeter for it.