parenting

Happiness Inflation

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Inflation is a term that is usually applied to economics. Merriam-Webster defines inflation as, “a continuing rise in the general price level usually attributed to an increase in the volume of money and credit relative to available goods and services”. In short, inflation refers to the fact that, over time, you need more money to buy the same thing. These days, we pay $5 instead of $0.90 for the same gallon of gas.

However, it seems like more and more I’m seeing a different type of inflation. Let’s call it “happiness inflation”: it takes more “things” to buy the same level of happiness.

Yeah, yeah, so what’s new? Who doesn’t know that?

I know. It’s obvious, right? But like regular, economic inflation, you don’t really think about it all that often, because there’s nothing you can really do about it. Everybody knows gas costs more these days. We don’t dwell on it. We can’t bring down the price of gas, and it’s just a part of life, so on we go.

The important thing to remember is that paying $5 for gas doesn’t mean we are getting more gas. The same goes for happiness inflation; even though we are getting more things, we are still the same amount of happy.

I probably wouldn’t notice happiness inflation either, except for being a parent. It takes on a lot of different aspects when it comes to kids.

There’s present inflation. When we were younger we got a certain number of presents, and we were happy. Now, kids get 10 times that number of presents, and they are about the same amount of happy. It’s not one outfit, it’s 3 outfits. It’s not one playset, it’s the whole line. We feel embarrassed if we only got one book, or only spent $20, or if our present doesn’t have a built in computer chip.

In fact, as a parent you see a lot of birthday inflation in general. Think about birthday parties when you were a kid. Your aunts and uncles and cousins came over and maybe you had a cake. That’s it. But it was exciting, and you looked forward to it. You were happy. Now there are themes, and gift bags, and entertainers, and catering. It takes that much more for a 3 year old to be the same level of happy.

There’s candy inflation: getting 5 pieces of candy thrown to you at a parade isn’t sufficient. You have to have 500 pieces. Or a handful from each house at Halloween instead of one piece, or a full sized candy bar. You can’t have an ice cream cone in the summer as a nice treat, you have to have an ice cream cone every day, with a slice of pie on the side. But wait, you can’t just get an ice cream cone, it has to be dyed some kind of “fun” color, because, you know, ice cream cones just weren’t fun enough by themselves.

Just like economic inflation, it is impossible to fight. If I go to the gas station and say, “I only want $0.90 of gas,” I don’t get a gallon. Similarly, if I throw a birthday party and don’t give out gift bags, I don’t get the same level of happiness that we used to get before people gave out gift bags. Now I have to give the gift bags if I want to obtain a gallon of happiness.

The thing is, each person only sees what they are giving, but only the parents can see the big picture. Other people can’t see how out of control and over the top it is. They want to see a kid’s eyes light up when they hand them some jelly beans on Easter, not realizing that 5 other people gave them a handful already. Each person gives as many gifts or sweets or outfits individually as their own kids got total from everyone when they were little.

People just can’t seem to help themselves.

We’re not immune to this as parents. We want to make our kids as happy as anyone else does, probably more so. But I feel so trapped by the whole thing. Either we go along with it and contribute to the overall rise in inflation, or we deprive ourselves of the joy of making our kids happy, turning ourselves into “mean parents” who never give our kids anything. Just bow out and let everybody else get the satisfaction of seeing their faces light up. Because inflation is everywhere, and there’s so much on all sides, the only way to average it out is to never give anything.

Maybe it’s not the kids who are suffering from inflation, maybe it’s the adults. Maybe our tolerance for making a kid’s face light up has gone up over time. We need more and more “hits” to reach the same level of satisfaction, so we selfishly press that button as often as we can.

I can’t fight inflation. The only way to stem the tide is if everyone, everywhere, all at the same time, tackles the problem. Frankly, that’s not going to happen. All I can say is, look at the obese kids and the debt problems and the selfishness of the world and think about how you personally are contributing to it.

Maybe if we all did that a little more often, we could experience a little bit of “happiness deflation”. Trust me, it’s better than it sounds.

I think she’s on to us

/ Shane / Leave a comment

“I don’t understand,” said Evie. “On Easter, the Easter Bunny brings you things, and on Christmas, Santa Claus brings you things. Why don’t the Leprechauns bring you things on St. Patrick’s day?”

She makes a good point. “It doesn’t work that way,” doesn’t seem like a very good answer. Why doesn’t it? If we live in a world where magic creatures have nothing better to do than bring you presents, and this is normal, then is it so crazy that leprechauns should bring you things too?

“It doesn’t work that way,” I said.

“It does for [my friend*]. Leprechauns bring him things all the time.”

(*Her friend with a name so Irish that I would never use it in a story because nobody would believe an Irish person would be named that.)

Eventually she gave up pestering me when she realized I had nothing more to add.

The next morning she told Ollie, “After we’re dressed, let’s go check under our pillows to see if the leprechauns left us anything!” Ollie didn’t really seem interested, but she kept insisting and asking him, “Did you feel anything under your pillow last night?” I had mostly forgotten about the conversation, but she seemed absolutely sure the leprechauns would have left something under there. I braced myself for the inevitable crying to follow.

Instead I was met with excited shouting.

Under Evie’s pillow was a card written in green crayon that said, “I Love Evelyn Lois Halbach The Leprekans”. Ollie was staring rapturously at a tiny card from under his pillow that was mostly green hearts.

Evie looked me in the eyes and dared me to say the cards hadn’t come from leprechauns.

I don’t think that she has connected this back to other things, like the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, but it seems like it can’t be far behind. In duping her brother (and me as far as she knows), she’s seen behind the curtain a little bit. She’s far too bright to not eventually make the connection between how easy it was to orchestrate the leprechaun cards and how easy it would be to fake other things.

On the other hand, she’s already demonstrated a supreme willingness to hold on to her childhood longer than completely necessary. I would not be surprised in the slightest if she ignored all evidence to the contrary, simply because she *wanted* to believe in something. I guess maybe we all do that. I guess that’s called being human.

I want her to resist. Believing in magic is something that I hope she holds on to for a long, long time. Maybe forever.

The Joys and Sorrows of an Apathetic Child

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I don’t know if I’ve ever met a kid as easygoing as Ollie. Everybody always says, “Oh it must be so nice to have such an agreeable child!” Of course it is. But also some times it isn’t.

Ollie, do you want to eat this pickle dipped in sriracha? Sure. Do you want your sister to dress you up in girls clothes and conscript you into whatever game she wants to play? Why not. Did you just run face first in the wall? Honey Badger don’t care. Oliver, did you just pee your pants and sit in the urine for 30 minutes? ::shrug::

The problem with apathy is that if you are generally satisfied with everything, you don’t have much motivation. Sure, it’s nice not having to fight with him about eating veggies, or what clothes he’s going to wear, but it’s also frustrating when he’s happy to have you dress him every day, or doesn’t feel like learning what sounds animals make. He doesn’t have much of a drive to acquire new skills.

It’s often amazing to me that my two children are just the absolute photo-negative of each other. Evie has strong opinions about everything, and is very motivated to practice things until she gets them *exactly right*. She is always interested in doing things on her own and wants to know how to do everything, all the time. On the other hand, I have to fight with her every day because her clothes aren’t “beautiful enough” or “don’t feel right”.

When Oliver is older, I worry about people taking advantage of him. He’s so willing to give up what he has to make other people happy. If he and Evie are fighting over a toy, and they both end up crying, he will give the toy to Evie to help her feel better. He’s just such a big sweet ball of cuddles and self-sacrifice.

It’s not that he never wants to do things by himself, or learn something new, or have a toy all to himself without sharing, but by and large it’s not the norm. And considering he’s just going on 3, he’s probably in a stage where he’s about as selfish as he’s ever going to be.

An easygoing child is an embarrassment of riches, and complaining about it runs the risk of annoying all the other parents out there. I know there are worst problems to have. But it’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.

The Saddest Snowman in the World

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The kids have been *dying* to make a snowman. There hasn’t been much of an opportunity this year, since the few times there’s been snow, it’s been too cold and powdery for snowman building. In addition, we got a “frosty the snowman” kit for Christmas from Grandma Kathy, which included a hat, homemade scarf, an actual corn-cob pipe*, a button for a nose, and two lumps of coal for eyes. Believe me the kids were itching to use that kit.

*I remember playing with this pipe when I was a kid. Mom, why did we have a corn cob pipe, and were the ’80’s such a different time that we were allowed to pretend to smoke? My how things change.

So finally the conditions were right, and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity.

snowman 001

Not pictured is Evie, who was having a sobbing fit.

Poor Evie. On the days where she goes to school and then has to stay in aftercare until I can pick her up, she is completely wiped. She can barely hold it together for the few hours until she goes to bed. In this case, the snowman was just too much. (And to be fair, I’m not necessarily at my best either at about 6:00 after a hard day of work and a long commute.)

The thing is, I know she really wanted to make a snowman. All winter she’s been asking about it. But first her snowpants didn’t feel right. Then she didn’t know that Sara and Ollie had already made the snowballs, and she was pretty upset about that. We offered to make a second snowman with her, but that wasn’t really good enough. We offered to let her put the accoutrements on the snowman, but that wasn’t good either. She didn’t understand we were trying to help her, trying to make it better, and honestly I don’t think she wanted to be helped. I think she just needed to have an emotional outpouring in the form of an absolute meltdown.

So, instead of a fun little thing to do in the snow, it ended in nobody really having a good time, and Evie being carried inside kicking and screaming and making grand declarations like, “I HATE THE SNOWMAN! I’M GOING TO GO BACK OUTSIDE AND RUIN THE SNOWMAN!” Ollie was just kind of confused by all of this.

::sigh:: This is such a hard situation, and one we haven’t really come up with a good solution for. When a kid is that tired, absolutely nothing is going to go right until they get some sleep. If something fun, like making the snowman you’ve been dying to make all winter, goes this poorly, you can imagine how well something like taking a bath or eating dinner goes. On the other hand, it’s not really appropriate to scream your vocal chords out or hit someone or break something because the snowman didn’t go the way you wanted it to. By nature I am very no-nonsense about this kind of behavior, so even though I know it is the result of over-tiredness, I have trouble going lightly on the poor girl (for anything) (ever).

Unfortunately, this is not such an uncommon way to end the evening at our house these days. I can only imagine what it will be like when she’s going to school 5 day s a week…

A Love Letter from Evie to her Daddy

/ Shane / 3 Comments

February 008Dad. Sorry, I love you last. Mom first, Nala, Ollie, then you Daddy.

I should point out that Nala is the cat.

One of the dangers of having a socially advanced kid is that she came out of the womb adept at using her love as a weapon. I don’t know where she learned this from, since it’s obviously not something she’s learned from example. Sometimes she’s actively trying to see if she can press your buttons, or punishing you for some perceived transgression. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly an attractive trait.

Unfortunately for her, I am completely immune to this, and I have hung the above declaration over my desk at work (oh yeah, and then posted it on the Internet).

My hope has always been that by ignoring these attempts and not making a big deal about them, she will realize that they don’t work and knock it off. The bad news is that she’s already practicing these skills, and will have honed them to a razor’s edge by the time she’s a teenager. But in the meantime, we can all have a good laugh over it.

What’s that? Oh, I guess I just have something in my eye…