I’ve discovered that being fair isn’t always as easy as we want it to be.
Take, for example, a situation I began to notice between my children, who are four years apart, that most parents will likely find all too familiar. Things my oldest child got to do never became an issue until my second child began feeling like he was being cheated.
“She got more than I did,” my son would say. “Why does she get to walk home by herself?” “It’s not fair that she gets to stay up longer than I do.”
Why shouldn’t he have said this? Because I had been evenly distributing their treats and making sure that they both got equal amounts of everything, and calling that fair.
But I’ve learned that being “fair” is challenging.
When they were younger, my kids had no problem evenly splitting a candy bar, no one walked home alone and bedtime was at 8 o’clock. But then I realized that I wasn’t really preparing them for this issue of fairness.
As a piece of advice for all young parents, I recommend starting to implement an age-appropriate dialog with your kids at an early age so it doesn’t become a bigger issue than necessary.
That dialog could sound something like, “She is getting this because she’s 4 and you get this because you’re 2. When you turn 4, you’ll get what she gets” or “He’s now 10 and gets to stay up half an hour later but when you turn 10, you’ll get to do the same.”
Why is this important? Because in the outside world, things don’t always seem fair and kids need to be prepared for this.
We do need to teach our children and help them understand that being fair isn’t just about dividing things into equal proportions. I believe that addressing this at a young age helps develop a clearer sense of what issues are worth tackling in life.
Rewards and prizes are often given to our children to help promote fairness. But somewhere down the line, we adopted an “everyone wins” attitude.
I’m not at all opposed to making sure children don’t feel left out. But have we overused this platitude?
This is why I raise the question.
A friend of mine had a daughter who stopped trying so hard to achieve “first place.” When asked why, the daughter responded, “Because everyone gets a ribbon anyway.”
Dr. Mom is a Peninsula mother who works in San Bruno. She has two grown children, has years of parenting experience and spends her time working with families to develop healthy relationships.