A profound question by Charles Schultz and my two year-old son. by Bill Gee
(centrist)
Monday, April 25, 2011
My two and a half year-old son doesnt have a lot of patience when it comes to political, psychological, or philosophical discussions. Whenever my wife and I get onto any subject that doesnt involve toys, puzzles, or the ABCs he declares in a loud and clear voice, I have a good question. Are we the zeros or the Xs? This tactic is usually quite successful at breaking us out of our deeply grown up conversation as we attempt to answer him as to what side were all on today.
The quote comes from one of his favorite Peanuts cartoons, Its Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, where Peppermint Patty is going over the game plan for the Homecoming football game thats about to start. After going over several complex plays, one of the members of the team asks the question, to which Patty puts her hand on her face and tells the team to just play hard and follow her lead.
On a philosophical level, what Charles Schultz is challenging his audience to consider is “do you know side are you on?”. Or if you go even deeper, “do we even have any sides to choose from?”. What my son is challenging me to do is to think about whether the “grown up” conversation with my wife is worth alienating him by talking about a subject that he has absolutely no frame of reference in which to participate. If we continue to exclude him from our conversation, then we are clearly on “different sides”.
As adults, we love to talk about the things that interest us. As parents, we have to be constantly considerate of the little people who are listening to our conversations and are longing to participate. I’m not sure if this would be such an issue if my son had a brother or sister, but I believe that whether you have one child or ten, if your children believe that you are on two different teams, that cannot be a good thing. Therefore, I have to keep in mind that my own propensity to discuss a topic to death needs to be curtailed to the point where I can succinctly make my points and then focus my attention on being my son’s playmate.
Another issue that disturbs my boy is when our grown-up conversations contain a fair amount of emotional baggage. When we talk about the state of world affairs or about things that truly disturb us, he shuts down or starts to act out. Again, this has necessitated some serious internal edits to our conversations and our emotional attachments to whatever we’re talking about. Today, we quickly acknowledge how something is making us feel, say our piece, and then let it go. For issues that affect us more deeply and which requires a more in-depth exploration, we go to our family counselor.
It is bad enough that we think about and talk about things that truly disturb us. Sometimes, it can be helpful to a child’s emotional development to know that their parents are human beings who struggle with questions of morality, fear, pain and uncertainty. But the next time you feel the need to unload some emotional baggage in front of your children, ask yourself this: “Are we the Zeros or the X’s?”, and be sure to include your child on whatever team you happen to be.
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