Beech Tree News Network

“Do you want your teeth to fall out?”  That was the question my daughter put to my granddaughter one evening during a heated exchange over teeth brushing.  Usually, there is no resistance by my granddaughter.  She has all of the tools invented to entice a little one to brush: a Little Mermaid stool upon which to stand in order to reach the faucet, a Monster High electric tooth brush, and Tom’s strawberry-flavored toothpaste.  That particular night, however, she just wasn’t feeling it.  The back and forth between the two made me think about the questions parents pose to children in the hope of appealing to the voice of reason that resides somewhere inside the child’s psyche.
 To my granddaughter’s credit, she answered “no” to the question posed to her by her mother, probably, because in her mind’s eye she saw her teeth lying strewn about her upon the floor.  If she had considered the possibility that the pink plastic vampire teeth she likes to scare people with would have fit in her mouth much better without her own teeth in the way, she would probably have answered “yes” to the teeth-falling-out question.  You have to be careful what questions you pose to children.
Questions that worked in my day might not work as well today.  Take the classic, “Do you want me to pull this car over right now?”  In my day, if a parent pulled the car over, it was usually on a rural road bordered by trees that could provide more than enough switches to do the job.  In today’s world, if you pull the car off the road, you might find yourself in the drive-through at McDonald’s, buying a Happy Meal, just to stop the honking from the cars in the line behind you that you’ve brought to a stand-still while you rant at your kids.
One of my favorite questions ever posed to a child by a parent was posed by one of my close friends.  Her small son left disaster in his wake wherever he went.  She got so tired of constantly cleaning up the mess.  One particularly stressful day, she said, “Look at this place, it’s a mess!  I wanted you to have better, but I guess you don’t want better.  Maybe we should just go get an old school bus and put it up on blocks.  Is that what you want, to live in a school bus up on blocks?”
Turns out, that’s exactly what her son wanted.  He and his friends included the school-bus-up-on-blocks scenario in their play time for weeks.  They would take turns driving the pretend bus, opening the pretend door, and taking a pretend ride to a final stop, where they set the pretend bus up on pretend blocks.  The point was completely missed, but the scenario did provide hours of entertainment for the little tyke.
I know a lot of parents who ask, “Do you want me to spank you?”  I wasn’t one of the lucky kids who got asked that question.  I was just grabbed up and thrashed with the wire end of a fly swatter.  The question came after the spanking, while I was still crying.  “Do you want some more of that?” my step mom would ask.  “If you don’t shut up your crying, you’re going to get more of it!”  I never really grasped the whole “stop crying or I will give you something to cry about” concept.  I mean, if you want a kid to stop crying, it seems to me like the last thing you would do is hit them again, because if it hurt the first time, more than likely, it’s going to hurt the second time, being that their skin is already sore from the first spanking—I’m just sayin.
I do feel sorry for today’s parents, though.  In the grand scheme of things, I think they have it worse than any generation that came before them.   “Do you want me to turn this car around and take you back home?” would probably be met with a yawn by present-day children.  “Back home” in my world was an upstairs bedroom with no air conditioner, a transistor radio and a broken fan.  “Back home” today is a temperature-controlled bedroom with a computer, a gaming system and an electric guitar.   Today’s kids are also street smart and tech savvy.  In order to stay ahead of the game, parents have to think like their kids do.  The questions run more along the lines of: “Do you want me to take a picture of this pig sty you call a bedroom and post it to your Facebook page?  Do you want me to change your status to ‘at home with Mom and Dad shelling Crowder peas?’  If you don’t change your attitude right now, that’s exactly what you’re going to be doing!  And don’t think for one minute I can’t hack your account.  If I can’t figure it out, I’ll hire somebody to do it!” 
I shudder to think of the tech wars ahead.  I’m just glad I got to raise my girls in an era when the old stand-bys worked.  I never used “Do you want me to spank you?” or “Do you want me to come back there?” or any of the other “Do you want me to___(fill in the blank with your personal favorite), but it was comforting to know that I had them if I needed them.  Besides, I’m way too tired to try to figure out how to hack into a Facebook page.