"No Fair!"

In my humble and biased opinion, I have more than one good-looking child, and here's another of them. He has his own little quirks, some of which we understand and some, like in the picture to the left, are beyond our comprehension. He's not as wild as his younger brother, but there's certainly no mistaking the fact that he's about a million percent "boy." (My math-minded friends will hopefully excuse my shameless disregard for real math concepts.) He's also loving and helpful, when he wants to be, and can be extremely thoughtful and diligent in what he sets his mind to do.

But poor kid, if there was such a thing as luck, his would be of the decidedly bad variety. If there's something to trip over, he'll do it. If all the kids get a new toy, sure enough, his will be the one to break. If it can be lost, he'll loose it - forever. Point in case - for his birthday he got a nifty Lego set, and the very next day, he came to me saying (in something closer to a wail, actually) that he couldn't find the figures that went with it. "I'm sure we'll find it, Ryan," I insisted, but after looking in every possible location we could think of - under the couch and under the beds, in every nook and cranny that came to mind, even in the trash cans - I finally had to agree with him that it seemed he was the first person ever to really and truly have something disappear into thin air.

So perhaps it's this tendency that's led to his adoption of a new motto, or perhaps, as Dave insists from time to time, it's being "neglected" as a middle child - which I also insist is not remotely true. In any case, a new motto he has, and it's "No fair!" I can't count how many times a day we hear this, and frankly, I don't really have a solution for it, even though it distresses me to see him so distressed over the perceived injustices of life. Some may be real, and I do my best to help him through those, others... He's always had a bit of a tendency to ask the questions that will get a "no" answer. I've wondered if he does this on purpose, if it's some kind of twisted game mean to drive me out of my mind. When he was younger, he would wake up asking if he could have cookies for breakfast. What about popsicles? Ice cream? ANYTHING AT ALL THAT'S NOT A BREAKFAST FOOD???!!! PLEASE??? One way I got around this was to make him juice popsicles in ice cube trays, just so I could finally say, "Yes, you CAN have popsicles for breakfast!" and that seemed to help a bit. He also seemed to grow out of his intense need for whatever he didn't have, but he seems to have regressed a bit. It doesn't matter what he has or does, it's always the thing he doesn't have or isn't doing that he absolutely must have, and somehow I come across as the kill-joy. This morning he woke up with bounce-off-the-wall energy, asking for breakfast, and I rolled out of bed bleary-eyed and make pancakes with him first thing. His mouth still crammed with pancake, he asked if he could ride his bike on our cul-de-sac, to which request I said yes. Then he wanted his new shoes which were still in the car, and said yes, he could get them. But could he go see if his friends around the corner could play? No, it's too early. Could he watch TV? No, the remote downstairs wasn't working, and people upstairs were still sleeping. Could he, could he, could he....???? and he started to dissolve into unhappiness. "It's no fair!" I sighed and wondered if a little perspective about the good things he did get to do so far was too much to ask. Judging from his reaction, I gathered it was.


Add his siblings and "no fair" is almost like a reflex.

"He gets a bigger piece than me? No fair!"

"He gets the blue plate? No fair!"

"You gave him his drink first [a whole millisecond before mine]? No fair!"

"Why does he get to go over to a friend's house and I don't? No fair!"

"He'll get to do two fun things and I'll only get to do one? [Ryan keeps a record of these kinds of things.] No fair!"

Last night he walked into my room, where Drew and I were, and he said, "So what is HE getting to do NOW that's NOT FAIR?"

Talks about things gratitude and enjoying the things you have without worrying about everyone else are completely lost on him. He also seems to not hear me when I remind him of the time a couple weeks ago when he went with me to run some errands, and we had lunch out together, something no one else got to do. ("So see? Sometimes you get to do things they don't, and sometimes they do things you don't, but it's ok!" Nope. "But it's" - you guessed it - "no fair!") When last night Aimee went over to a friend's house to spend the night, he launched into yet another "no fair" session. "What?! She gets to go over to Hope's house and watch a movie and have fun? And all we get to do is be BORED and go to bed? No fair!" (Incidentally, I had never said this was the plan...) I tried a couple of different tactics here, including asking him if he really wanted to do exactly the same things as Aimee was going to do. Did he really want to have a night of giggling and playing Barbies? (Shh - don't tell Aimee I let it slip that she still does these things!) But he was determined that he was getting cheated somehow. Finally I just asked him what he thought would make the night "fair." He sniffed and said, "If we got to watch a movie, too." Easy enough. Let's do it. FAIR! So maybe there's a solution to some of these times - maybe getting him to express himself and form reasonable requests will help a bit. But there's also probably just the reality that learning to deal with life means learning to deal with things that aren't "fair." Then again, maybe it's also true that the ability to see injustice - everywhere and in everything - means that one day he'll be able to see injustice in the lives of others, and he'll have a heart for seeking to correct those things.

Whatever the case, it may drive me crazy right now, but I think he'll grow out of it...and he's still awfully cute! Shh - don't tell him that! He likes to think he's too old for that kind of thing.