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Impulse Control
I'm coming to you this morning from deep deep deep in the belly of birthday season, where things are sort of like a casino. You're never sure what time it is or even what day it might be but you're high on cake and some sort of entertaining activity and only briefly troubled by the tug of obligations and a huge pile of neglected work, forgotten chores. Even the terrier has caught birthday season fever and is trying to get his dinner time permanently shifted to the mid-afternoon-- the time of pizza and cake.
As hostess, I survived one of the two parties I have to take care of this season and I dealt with the whole issue of present weirdness (which I wrote about in the context of Emily Bazelon's unsatisfying solution to her own "present guilt" a while ago) by only opening presents gradually, having my kid say something about each present for use in a thank you card and then putting almost everything away, so that this embarrassment of items can be dealt with slowly. (I can't let myself get behind on thanks, but I do feel the need to institute some sort of perspective.) Oh, and while I write the notes, my boys need to sign them, so they can get a sense of the writer's cramp their mother sustains.
Maybe this is as bad as the Bazelon Solution, but I think we all make crazy deals with ourselves to make these uncomfortable things bearable.
So it was with some interest that I spotted last night, when I was neither watching the Super Bowl nor doing anything productive, another couple of pieces on Slate about teenage recklessness and how to get the kids-today-with-their-hair-and-their-clothes to act with a little more regard for life and limb. Both were written by Alan Kazdin and Carlo Torella and are pretty interesting. (Here is the first installment. This is part two.)
The interesting thing, to me, about the recommendations, is that what these psychologists advocate is extremely normal behavior: rigorous but gentle monitoring of kids, strong parent child relationships, encouraging skills in children.... that sort of thing. Not surprisingly, as with the preschool set, explaining why dangerous activities should be avoided doesn't tend to be successful.
What does this have to do with birthday parties and present opening? Nothing too much really, except that I realize that the more complicated and strained one's efforts are to have good kids, what one should probably do is strive to be reasonable-- which is not as interesting as some of the more wild techniques, and is sort of difficult and boring.
posted by Elise at 6:41 AM
2 Comments
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