Macaroon dad
At the back of our fridge, behind the milk and the yogurt, but still in plain view, inside a fragile-looking glass jar, were about 10 delicious looking, multi-colored macaroons.
And my 5-year old daughter was obsessing over them.
She had been talking about them all throughout dinner, and I agreed to let her have a few if, and only if, she finished the 3 large pieces of grilled cauliflower that were getting cold on her plate. She did, eventually, but not without a lot of complaining.
After she gobbled down the last bit of cauliflower, she opened her mouth to show me that she had eaten every last bite, and was ready for dessert.
“Daddy, can I have the macaroons now?”, she said with uncontainable excitement.
I agreed to let her have two, and she hopped off her chair and ran to the fridge, and swung open the door.
“Can you get them for me? They’re all the way at the back of the fridge.”
“Nope, get them yourself, sweetie”, I replied.
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Kamikaze parents
I admit to being a helicopter parent, but I’m trying to kick the habit.
Both my wife and I are notorious for doing things to make life easier for our kids. It’s gotten a little out of hand, in my opinion. They expect us to do everything.
“We’re not helicopter parents. We’re kamikaze parents.”, I told Karen recently.
Make their cereal. Pour them a cup of milk. Pick their clothes. Change the show on the TV. The list goes on.
It’s not that they can’t do these things. We just always do it for them. They’re not learning as fast they should.
These are things that they should be doing themselves by this time, in my opinion. I don’t remember being so dependant on my parents at this age.
It’s not going to do them any favors once they get into the real world.
“I don’t want to drop the glass jar. It’s all the way at the back of the fridge. Daddy, can you get it for me?”
It was at that moment that I would normally cave. I would normally walk a few steps over from the kitchen table to the fridge, and save the day for my little girl.
But this time was different.
It was different because I remembered the story of Bean Dad.
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A ridiculous new superhero
On Twitter, I had read about a father who refused to help his 9-year-old daughter open up a can of beans. She wanted to eat them for lunch, and his basic message to her was ‘figure out how to make them yourself’. He wouldn’t even show her how to use a can opener.
So I said, “How do you think this works?” She studied it and applied it to the top of the can, sideways. She struggled for a while and with a big, dramatic sigh said, “Will you please just open the can?” Apocalypse Dad was overjoyed: a Teaching Moment just dropped in my lap! — Bean Dad- January 2, 2021
After 6 hours of trying, the girl was finally able to figure out how to open the can using a can opener. The father, now referred to as ‘Bean Dad’ by the internet, called it a ‘teachable moment’.
If she’s ever lost in the woods with a can of beans and a can opener, she’ll know what to do.
That Bean Dad is a gosh darn superhero.
***
My inner Bean Dad
“Daddy! Please get them for me. I don’t want the jar to break!”
Calling on my inner Bean Dad, I stayed seated and informed her that she had to get them herself. I said that, if she really wanted them, then she could get them. If she didn’t, then she wouldn’t. But I wasn’t going to be the one to get them for her.
My daughter can be a bit of a drama queen. When she is upset or when she sulks, she uses every bone in her body to physically embody the emotion. This instance was no different. She huffed. She puffed.
In the end, she reached her hands into the fridge, and carefully navigated the glass jar out and onto the kitchen table without any damage at all.
“I did it, Daddy!”
***
The takeaway
You should let your kids should try new things. Push them to do new things.
Yes, sometimes they’ll fail miserably. That glass jar, for example, could have fallen out of my daughter’s hands and smashed into a thousand pieces on the floor.
Even if it did, my daughter would have learned something from the experience. The next time, she would know, she would have to do it differently.
The lesson here is that we have to let kids experiment, and we have to let them experience the possibility of failure. As parents, we can coach, and we can guide.
But we shouldn’t hold them back from the possibility of failure.
Life is full of teachable moments. It’s full of failures.
In my life, I’ve failed countless times. And I’ve almost always learned from the failure. As good parents, we have to afford our kids the same opportunities.
They’ll be better for it.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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