Reflections of Your Worst Habits
Thu Mar 06, 2008 at 07:26:42 AM PDT
KC hit on this briefly in her "Consumer Diet" diary, but seeing as though it's been weighing on my mind lately, I thought I'd expound a little- I’m worried about the example I’m setting for my kid. I will admit the typical "won't someone PLEASE think of the children" bodice clutching that a lot of adults engage in is a huge pet peeve of mine, and I think that over-sanitizing a child's world by eliminating anything remotely bad, non-educational, or Adult does more harm than good. But lately... ugh.
Lily’s almost 2 now, so mimicking is in full force. I crack up when she tries to put on makeup, and I indulge her chap stick obsession. I like that she jams to a lot of different music and how she picks up her purse, keys and says “bye, goin’ to my car”. I even thought it was pretty darn funny when she repeated the f-word right back at me-I am a big believer in teaching kids, when they are older, that there are adult words and kid words. Nothing makes me crazier than when my niece tells me I can’t say a word like “stupid”- I can say whatever I want kid. Damn.
But there are other habits that I’m not so happy to see reflected back my way.
Shopping is one of the biggies. Lily loves to shop, will ask to go shop, pretends to shop at home, and is a budding consumer. She will pick things up in a store and say “in the cart!” if she wants them. The “put it back, please” that used to work isn’t cutting it anymore, and why should it- DH and I tend to purchase whatever calls out to us. The tantrums grow, and I know that’s an age thing, but still.
Eating habits are another. When she sees the golden arches, she starts asking for chicken and the other night she walked around asking for Cheeseburgers please. She wants chips for a snack now, like Daddy has every afternoon, and though we flat out refuse to even let her try it, she’s becoming very insistent on wanting pop.
Then there’s the parent-placement technique- if she sees one of us heading for a computer, it’s “no mommy, you sit here.” If we’re zoning with our TV she points to the remote and says “bye bye” (meaning, turn that damn thing off). She’s assigned a remote to all of us, which just tells me it’s in our hands an awful lot. She can veg in front of the boob tube like DH and I tend to, and often I won’t have noticed that DH put on the THIRD episode of the Wiggles to keep her out of his hair- hello, there’s a reason they aren’t very long!!
When we talked about having kids, DH and I had long conversations about what was cool and what wasn’t. Gone are the violent video games in her presence, as are the horror movies. But other than that? Not much has changed. We eat out too much, watch too much TV and shop too much. Convincing DH that this is a problem isn’t working- after all, we make it work, right? But the weight of knowing I’m setting an example is starting to get to me. Any bad habits you picked up from your parents (mine is the shopping one)? Any bad habits your kids are picking up from you? Any way you can think of that I can scare my DH into making some changes with me?
