I try to make sure everything is really fair. It’s only fair to be fair, right? To my kids (and probably yours) nothing is ever fair. In my kid’s minds, I always seem to give more of something to child and less to another.
The words always and never are used frequently by my kids. You always punish me and not him!, or He never gets in trouble and I do! are comments I hear often and they’re not really true. So I spend more time than I want to explaining that sometimes in their minds it might seem unfair, but that I make every effort to do things equal. If it seems that someone is in trouble more often than another person, than it’s likely that his behavior is to blame, not an issue of a fairness.
Yesterday Boy #1 was asked to go to a friend’s house and sleep over. I’m not a big sleepover mom, I’m happy to have kids stay at my house but not so much my kids elsewhere. This was a case where my friend has kids the same age as mine and when together they play very well. On this occasion only my oldest was invited because he really plays most with her oldest son. My 7 year-old is a bit younger and though he plays with them sometimes, he’s not really her son’s primary friend. She also has a 4 year old who plays with my 4 year old. … I had to set that up so you know the story… So I drop off Boy #1 and the other two are in the car with me and start FREAKING out. I want to go and play and stay over. It’s not fair! They screamed and threw a fit – a serious meltdown. I understood that they wanted to play, but it just wasn’t going to work out this time. We had things to do and Boy #1 is entitled to time with his friend on his own too. In fact, just the day before we went to the beach to spend time with Boy #2’s friend.
It’s so tough sometimes trying to explain situations like these because their cries and screams where so sad (and annoying eventually) but in their minds, they just thought it wasn’t fair.
