Teaching Kids About Fairness

"The only time you should look in someone else's bowl is to make sure they have enough."

I love this quote.  I can't repeat it enough to my children.

We are raising our kids in a very entitled culture.  They are being groomed from early preschool on to believe that everything needs to be fair.  Parents are counting out Easter eggs before hunts to make sure that everyone gets the same amount of eggs.  Moms are counting out goldfish to make sure that their children get an exact equal amount.  People are expected to buy gifts for both the birthday child and their siblings.  Kids are being taught that everything needs to be exactly the same and "fair."

Except that it's not.....

Life is not made up of fair situations.  Fair is really quite relative in a vast majority of situations.  Instead of counting out Easter eggs before to make sure that everyone gets exactly 10, maybe you should be teaching your child to look around and see if there is someone who's having a difficult time finding eggs and help them find some for their basket.  Maybe instead of obsessing over the fact that their friend got three more goldfish, perhaps you should be teaching your child to be thankful that they were given such a fun snack.  Instead of making everyone buy your child a gift even though it's not their birthday, maybe you should be teaching them that they can help make their sibling's day special by supporting them.  No, they're not too young to understand (most of the time).  They are never too young to begin to learn the concept of selflessness, even if they aren't mature enough to practice it yet.

We wonder why the world seems like such a selfish place yet we are grooming our children to believe that they are the center of the universe.  We're so concerned with "hurt feelings" and "damaged psyche" that we're actually damaging them more, in the long run, by not preparing them for life.  We don't want our first child to be "damaged emotionally" when they get a younger siblings so we overcompensate.  Then, as their sibling gets older, we can't figure out why Big Sis is feeling resentment and anger that their extra privileges are now considered  unnecessary.

Look, I understand that we all, as parents, want for our children to have a better life than we had.  Maybe that means we do many things that our parents did for us and just add on.  Maybe that means that we do the polar opposite of what our parents did.  It's not a sin to want something better for your children but you need to decide if "better" just means that your child has more things or if "better" means your child gets more time and experiences with you and ultimately turns into a great person because of it.  We need to start setting priorities for what "better" is and remember that once our children are grown and out of our house, the rest of the world has to live with them.  Not only that, THEY have to know how to live with the rest of the world.

The other part of this statement is about teaching kids to mind their own business.  We are so concerned with hurting our kids' feelings that we feel the need to explain everything.  Kids are no longer allowed to be told that Mommy's talking to her friend; Mommy now has to explain everything she's talking about with her friend.  No...just no.  Kids DO have feelings and kids DO deserve explanations on a wide variety of topics but they also need to learn that not everything is their business.  They need to learn to "worry about themselves."  They need to learn that it's fine to worry about what someone else has IF you're intending to help but if they're concerned about whether or not it's "fair" or not, they need to mind their own business.

Take a step back, the next time you start to worry about what's fair and look at the big picture.  What seems "unfair" may just be a good opportunity to teach your kids about life.