I was rummaging through my home office bookshelves recently to identify some titles for donation to make space for new finds. That’s when I came across a child’s drawing. You know, the kind that makes you smile and takes you back to when your kid was just a sweet little rug rat. As parents, we don’t save every drawing, but when we do save one it’s for a reason.
Little did I know this one would be packed with so much irony.
What I had discovered appeared to be a kindergarten exercise at the turn of the millennium. The header at the top says, “If I was President …,” with a large space in the center left blank for an illustration. An empty line underneath invited children to finish the sentence begun at the top, which I’m guessing was dictated to the teacher to fill in. Would politics even allow this today, I wonder? I’m thinking Gov. Ron DeSantis wouldn’t like this assignment.
Fortunately, my daughter’s artistic skills have vastly improved, but at age 5 her depiction of the White House looked like a hunk of Swiss cheese topped by a rainbow-colored roof. Her completed sentence reads: “If I was President … I would do the right rules. You have to check if everyone is OK.”
Bravo, yes, follow the law and take care of your citizens. I would gander that “the right rules” could also refer to moral values. It appears that even my 5-year-old knew how a president should act, not that Bill Clinton understood that at the time. He was winding down his presidency in 2000. That Southern, womanizing, snake oil salesman was an embarrassment. I can still see him wagging his finger in front of the television cameras denying he’d ever had “sexual relations with that woman.” Clinton wasn’t a role model, but he makes Donald Trump look like a boy scout.
You may be thinking, “Should politics be in the Family Matters column?” Sorry, this was simply unavoidable.
Fast forward almost 20 years and I’m in New Orleans with the same daughter on a mother-child birthday sojourn. I spot a very elegant hotel exterior and say, “Let’s go in and scope out the lobby.”
“No!” my daughter shouts. “Mom, don’t you see the sign? It says hotel guests only.”
I explain to her that if we just saunter in like we belong, nobody will question us – no harm, no foul. They’re probably just trying to keep out the riffraff, I explain. But she insisted that we had to follow “the rules.” Where did this strict adherence to rules come from? From our household, I guess, although my husband was fond of saying, “rules are meant to be broken.”
This did not mean that dad encouraged his children to be snarky with police and jack cars or do drugs and cut class. Far from it. What he meant is that some rules should be “broken” or changed because they make no sense. And if you teach children to have common sense, then they grow up to understand that policy change at the most basic level or in the United States Congress requires tenacious civility and advocacy. The person with the loudest, unsound and unsupported argument usually loses and makes no friends in the process.
Of course, I said usually. There’s always the exception … like Trump, although I don’t think he has any friends, just people who pretend to be because they’re afraid of him. Oops, sorry. There’s that big bad politics again, but not really.
What I’m talking about is behavior. It’s about the qualities we want to see in our children and our president. Like many parents, my husband and I encouraged our children to be strong and independent, not bullies – to have coping skills and be resilient in a world full of obstacles designed to tear you down instead of building you up.
So, what’s my daughter doing now? She’s out of state serving children and families in a low-income neighborhood, where kids follow her around like she’s the Pied Piper. She helps the boys with anger issues better understand their feelings so they can calm down and better interact with their peers.
When kids say hurtful things to one another, she exacts apologies and prevents violent escalations. She has difficult conversations with parents about their child’s behavior issues and, sometimes, recommends counseling. And if child abuse in the home is suspected, she does what the law requires, with a heavy heart.
To put it simply, she makes sure that everyone’s OK. So as kindergarten lessons go, I guess that’s the most important one to remember.