Mommy, Can I Have That?
Why Saying “No” Eight Million Times Seems to Fall on Deaf Ears
Earlier this week, I was sitting in the local ice cream shop with my four-year-old daughter while she licked a vanilla ice cream cone that was bigger than her head.
Suddenly, she pointed and said matter-of-factly, “Mommy, I want that.”
I followed her gaze. What did she want? Sprinkles? M&Ms?
“What, honey?” I asked, curious.
“That.”
She pointed again, this time clearly to the 1980s-style TV hanging in the corner. I started watching it. There was an ad on. No, she couldn’t mean that.
“A generator?”
She didn’t stop licking but nodded.
Yes.
I didn’t even know what to say. I just sat there with a perplexed expression on my face for a minute.
“Do you even know what a generator is?” I asked.
“It makes it look like the sun shines on the inside and it gets to stay outdoors,” she answered.
Wow.
Luckily, before I could properly explain why she couldn’t just have this piece of housing apparatus, another ad came on, this time for a robotic dog, to which she said, “Mommy, I want that!”
It was the last straw.
I started off parenthood with a clearly defined anti-spoiling strategy which I’ve largely adhered to. I only give toys on birthdays and holidays. Although books and clothes don’t count. Or sports equipment. Or school supplies. Or camp essentials. Or….
The list is endless. Kids need more and more stuff. A football helmet. Highlighters. A new leotard. The summer reading books. Blue bathing suits for swim class. There’s always something. Either the kids are asking me for it or I’m getting an email reminder to buy something for someone. I feel like I’m constantly swiping my card with nothing to show for it. I’m like Sisyphus pushing a credit card uphill.
A couple years ago, I came up with a good system for delaying gratification. Whenever we go to a store that sells toys (or frankly, anything from tennis racket grip to watermelons) and the kids start getting what Papa Bear calls “a case of the Gimmes,” I whip out my phone and take a picture of it.
“I want this for my birthday!” They say. Or Hannukah. Or Valentine’s Day. Once they even said they wanted a gift for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I mean, really.
I then upload the photos of the toy they must, must have to a shared Apple Photos album called Hannukah or Birthday. A few weeks before their birthday rolls around, I show the kids pics of all the things they’ve asked for and let them see for themselves how many things they don’t even want anymore. I think it’s a good lesson in general, plus it saves me a lot of time figuring out what to buy the kids and their friends as birthday gifts.
Another constant swipe: kids’ birthday presents! One year I did it right. I ordered 14 sleeping bags for all the children in my kids’ classes, stored them in the basement and then gave them out throughout the year. At the end of the school year, my kids arranged a “camp out” in the “backyard” where everyone brought their sleeping bags.
Yeah, that was when I only had two kids.
Now, with four, I want to get organized and buy in bulk, but I just can’t make it happen. My close friend, Paige, a mother of five who passed away last year, had an entire closet full of assorted junk items that she’d throw in a pretty paper bag and give away as gifts when the time came. Halloween Jell-o molds with a Frozen microphone and hot chocolate mix for my daughter’s June birthday. That kind of thing. So wrong it was just right. I need some sort of system like that.
In the meantime, I’m trying hard to figure out how to stop my own kids from asking for more. To be satisfied with what they have. Yes, they are grateful. Way more grateful than those other kids in the store over there. See them? Sheesh!
My kids do generally say “please” and “thank you,” and hug me with delight saying, “Thank you so much; you’re the best mama!” when I give them something they adore. I mean, they did that once. But they usually try to press the boundaries of what they can have which is exhausting.
I started commiserating: don’t all of us grown-ups kind of do that too? Is wanting more a totally bad thing? Is a child seeing something sparkly and pretty and wanting it right now so different from us coveting, say, the entire window display at J. Crew?
Last summer on my wedding day to my second husband, my mother lent me the gorgeous necklace her mother had given her. As she fastened it around my neck, my wedding gown on, my four kids milling about nervously pre-ceremony, she said earnestly, “My mom gave this to me on my 60th birthday. And when you’re 60 years old, I’ll give it to you too.” 60?! I’d just turned 40.
Mommy, can I have that?
I try every so often to put myself into the kids’ little Vans and imagine that every time I went shopping for something even as simple as Scotch tape (Staples is my daughter’s favorite store), I always had someone telling me “no” or that I had to wait. I try to feed the beast now and again so that their want and lust for things doesn’t grow too unmanageable just because the items are off limits. I’m trying to find the humor in all the begging. I’m trying to swipe my credit card a little less and stop rolling my eyes at some of their requests. (Fly swatters?) I’m learning all the many ways I can say — and do — say no. All the time. Over and over.
But forget all that. There’s a sale on One Kings Lane?? Gotta run.
