Living walking distance from a Dairy Queen has some HUGE perks. I often take walks there with my 3 kids and we have a treat, talk, and walk together.
The other day my youngest (age 10) and I were getting ready to walk over there together and he asked if he could ride his bike instead of walk. I told him that this wasn’t the best idea – because he would need two hands for his treat on the way home. He insisted that he’d be fine – he’d get a slushie, which only requires one hand, and he can ride his bike one-handed.
One of the parenting strategies that keeps me sane is “pick your battles.” So I decided not to insist on it, and off we went.
Sure enough, we were a few steps away from the Dairy Queen window when his green slushie fell to the ground in slow motion, splattering the ground (and our legs) with lemon-lime.
There was a long line at DQ, too – so about 20 people saw this happen. I saw his face turn red – not out of anger, but embarassment. Then I saw his heart sink because he no longer had a slushie.
This is the moment where I get to say, “I TOLD YOU SO,” right?
The thing is, I couldn’t look that kid in the eye and say “I told you so!” Not when he was already sad and embarassed.
I remember a time when I was sixteen. I’d had my license for maybe a couple of months, and I was driving to my part-time job at a restaurant. On my way there I decided to switch CDs (this was around 2000, so I had to grab my giant CD holder and flip through the pages like a book, then take out a CD and insert another CD. It’s a recipe for driving disaster). Sure enough, I rear ended a car at a stoplight. I had to call my parents, ashamed and embarassed.
My dad came to the site of the accident, and I remember asking him, “Aren’t you going to yell at me?”
And my dad, ever the even-tempered man, said “I don’t think that would help anything right now.”
So I walked up to the window at Dairy Queen and I purchased another slushie. On the way home I told my son the story of how my dad didn’t yell at me when I rear-ended a car. And in the grand scheme of things – a slushie is a slushie. We’re already in a pandemic and worrying constantly, canceling plans, and missing our friends. I’m giving the kid a dang slushie.
There’s more than one way to teach your kid a lesson. Sure, I could have yelled at him in public and eaten my treat in front of him. But what would that have taught him? I hope that instead, I taught him about compassion and grace. I think our world needs a lot of it right now.
