Soft-Served Discernment

I have started to believe that a person’s will can be sensed through their eyes, somehow.  When we look into someone’s eyes we may either see their will or sense it and not even realize it. There are also those folks that can see it and sense it and bend it at their whim – bending someone else’s will, not taking over their thought processes like Dr. Xavier, but realizing a weak will through someone’s eyes and then setting them in a different direction.

As this school season has started I have sensed the will of my three children through their eyes and must stay strong, dishing out the soft-served discernment as a parent - not a friend.

I don’t want to be friends with my three boys, I don’t want to be friends with my three boys, I don’t want to be friends with my three boys. I am their parent and want to be their father – their mentor. So, I need to act like it, and set a good example, which for me is a whole ‘nother step up on the hierarchical scale – because it is soooo easy to slip down to their cognitive level (and even lower).

As a parent, I think I have some patience, when push comes to shove I can bark, but I'm generally soft, in a rigid sense. When doling out punishment (justice?), I much prefer to make them understand by essentially bending their will in a verbal manner, rather than a tactile one (New Testament to Old?) – to make them see, realize and understand that I am right and they are not. I prefer to use short little sentences aka instructions/directives: Do your reading. Eat your carrots. Don’t peel the bark off the tree. Put your pajamas on. Go to bed. Stop. Stop it.

The trouble I’m finding is that I believe one is supposed to explain the reasoning for the short directive: Do your reading so you can grow up to be smart. Eat your carrots because they are good for you. Don’t peel the bark off the tree because the trees are stressed due to a general lack of precipitation and removing their bark makes them more susceptible to bugs infiltrating their defeneses therefor opening the tree up to premature death. Go to bed, because I want to play my mature rated X-Box games.

Do they understand this reasoning? Do they care? As school has started and they are essentially working through their day - they are more tired when they come home (especially the new kindergartner). So, as I attempt to bend their will using the patented directives approach, and they plead with me through their tearclogged eyes.... I stand my ground. I am rigid, like a rock (with soft moss growing on it).

As these examples, er boys are tired, their will seems to be more evident – through their eyes. Though this doesn’t seem to be of benefit because their will seems all rubbery and elusive or stubborn and determined. This is where it can get difficult, because of the tears – but this is where I need to be a parent and not their friend. “Take a nap, because you will feel refreshed” vs. “Oh all right, don’t take a nap, in fact here have some cotton candy to enhance your jumping and running and wrestling and bickering all over the house.”

Gotta stay strong, lay down the line and serve it up hard, er soft – the positive long term effects will far outnumber the short term easements. Thy will be done.

{And all the Grandparents chuckle at such grand hopes - while the parents-to-be whisper to each other how they will raise their kids to be model citizens and whatzhernutz rolls her eyes with slight consternation.}