There’s a three-foot-tall aborigine laying crumpled on my kitchen floor, babbling nonsense louder and louder. He’s past the point of listening to anything I have to say. I can’t just walk away and leave him alone until he finishes his fit, because, well… it’s a kitchen. It’s full of dangerous things. That’s why he’s not allowed in there. And I’m not going to solve the problem by hauling him off the floor and carrying him to his room. So what can I do?
Being able to say I have an authentic tribal person living with me would be pretty cool. But the truth is the person on my kitchen floor is someone much more rewarding than that. He is my two-year-old son. And this is his fifth attempt to retrieve something from out of the kitchen. {Except there’s no telling what that something is.) Together, on previous trips to the kitchen, my son and I went through everything in there he could possibly be allowed to eat or drink. And each of the previous four trips ended with him picking something I thought he wanted to eat… Until I got him set up in his high chair.
It’s been like this all week. See, on Sunday night, my Wife broke her foot. No grand story surrounding it. She just stepped on it wrong because it was asleep. Stress fracture on the fifth metatarsal. So she’s laid up in a cast and pretty much useless. At least… I’m trying to keep her that way, because she needs to stay off her feet while the break heals. And so I’ve been running after a two-year-old boy and his nine-month-old sister all week.
In moments like these, like a true salesman, my persuasiveness shines through. I have a flash of brilliance, and realize that he’s not hungry, he’s bored. I would have seen this earlier, but for the aforementioned extraordinary week we’ve all been through (the topper was knocking myself out cold on my nightstand yesterday morning). But fear not, I have an idea. I get down on my hands and knees, look at my son and say, “Giddy up?”
Off we ride into the sunset… which happens to be my bed. Papa was exhausted and needed to pass out after all that. Thankfully, so did my son.
So what’s my point in all this? I want you to put yourself in my shoes. You have a two-year-old freaking out on you. You can’t just ask him what he wants, because he doesn’t have the words for whatever it is, yet. And you’re pretty sure you’ve run out of options anyway. This is your fifth trip in here, after all. So what do you do?
Do you pick him up and haul him off to his room to deposit him for the duration of his fit?
Do you start raising your voice, berating him into submission?
Do you stomp off and ignore him until he’s done?
Any one of those, and many others, would have been suitable answers for a lot of other parents. Probably because other parents are typical people. Now, I’m not super-human. But I do burden myself with the realization that every moment in raising a child is a defining one.
For instance, of all the things I could site as reason why I don’t like my father, the one that comes to mind is when I was in the first grade. He sees that I have colored a picture and comes over to admire it. He feels it, and asks me how I got the colors so smooth, like my mother. I wasn’t sure what he meant when he asked that, but I was elated that he cared at all about what I was doing. So I picked up a colored pencil and tried to show him what I did. Immediately upon seeing that I had not used a crayon, he turned around and walked away. Now that seems really trivial looking back on it. But it stands out more to me than times when he had hit me, or even both times he threw me out of the house. And I’ll tell you why…
It’s because he didn’t respect me. He made an assumption that I had used crayon, and gotten the colors as smooth as my mom did when she colored with crayons. When he saw his assumption was wrong, he couldn’t even stick around to show an interest in me.
Jeez Louise, that sounds so lame sharing that here. But my story has a point. My father could never have guessed that moment would stick with me for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t say I could have guessed either. So when I found out my Wife was pregnant with our son, I gave a lot of thought to that memory.
Since I’m no more of a psychic than my father, I can’t tell what the defining moments of my children’s childhoods will be. My only solution is to realize that becoming a parent is a sacrifice of self, and just keep giving until I can’t give anymore. And do you think I’ve come anywhere near exhausting what I have to give? If you said no, you’d be right. I am amazed at the wells of inner strength I didn’t even know I have.
Look. Good salesmen don’t yell at their kids. Children are the toughest prospects you will ever face. Especially small, aborigine-esque toddlers. If you can get through raising your children without raising your temper, you can sell to any other prospect you’re likely to face.
Tags: parenting, persuasion, sales, sales training, tantrums, toddlers
