Temptation to Indulge

By the title of this post, you might think that I am writing about the temptation a parent feels to indulge themselves.  It is so easy to justify, "I had a really long day with the kids.  I need 6 scoops of ice cream tonight."  True, this temptation exists.  Except I don't necessarily disagree with this temptation and I go right on and indulge.  Maybe that'll change someday, but right now I am where I am.

This month, what I've really been thinking about is indulging children.  Ze'ev is still too little to understand the concepts of not having, acquiring, or wanting beyond the immediate moment.  Adina, however, has definitely reached an age of having long-term wants, anticipation, and understanding whether or not each and every one of those desires is fulfilled.

Instinctively, I am not one to overindulge my children.  In my natural, uninfluenced mode of parenting, I offer something special (brand new activity book, special icecream outing, etc.) once every few weeks.  Since these experiences do not take place on a daily basis, Adina's excitement in those moments has always been priceless.  Her eyes lit up, her grin spread from ear to ear, and sometimes she even started jumping because she just couldn't contain her excitement.

The past month, however, she has had a birthday, 8 days of Chanukkah and a week with grandparents and cousins.  At least once a day, the opportunity arose for me to allow one of those "special treats."  Because I see how much she enjoys those moments, I thought, "Ok, so she'll have a whole month of excitement!"  and I allowed a lot more than she's used to.

Unfortunately, this did not result in the immense excitement that I expected.  Instead, a very sad thing resulted.  She became desensitized to receiving special gifts and getting special treats.  In a very short amount of time, she acquired a feeling of entitlement.  If I don't give her something special, it results in protests.

She has a few more birthday presents coming this week, and after that we are going back to "lockdown mode" for a bit in an attempt to de-program this expectation for "special" every day.  I don't want anyone to think I am going to deprive my child.  She will not live a joyless life for a month.  She will still get to play with all of her toys, have play dates with her friends, eat cake on Shabbat, and all of those things.  I am just going to remind her that ice cream every time we do errands and presents to open every time the mail man comes are not expectations that are acceptable in our family.

I hope the "re-conditioning" happens fairly quickly, because I love seeing her get so excited over simple joys when they are special and rare.