It has, unfortunately, become a regular occurrence, of late, to awaken to the sounds of my 7-year-old daughter and my 5-year-old son in a screaming match with one another.  It isn’t always easy (or, frankly, even possible) to decipher the argument through the fog of early morning.  This morning, however, I was able to make out the gist of the issue, and it stood out to me because I had just seen this post within the past few days:

The Same Argument

You see, the argument was this: my daughter’s screaming was frustration that her brother had climbed onto her bed and was stomping around on the foot of it, trying to “persuade” her to come play with a particular toy with him, after (apparently) her initial answer wasn’t satisfying enough for his taste.

This is the exact same thing as the teenage nephew from the post above not knowing how to take no for an answer.

Early Childhood Struggles Equate to Later-Life Struggles

It’s easy to brush off spats like the one between my son and daughter this morning, considering them simply “normal” sibling rivalry and “no big deal.”  And in a way, they are “just normal” rivalry between siblings.  However, they are a big deal.  The root attitudes and motivations in the behaviors of young children translate to the same root attitudes and motivations in older children, teenagers, and adults; only the specific behaviors are different.  The “low-stakes” situations of early childhood provide the training ground for the potentially “higher-stakes” situations of later life.

What I tell my son today about trying to harass his sister into complying with his wishes will, in large part, determine what he believes about harassing other girls into complying with his wishes when he’s older.

So today, my son is hearing, “you may ask her nicely.  You may not get in her space and harass her because you don’t like her answer,” because that is important.

(And my daughter, if this were an issue of hers, would need to learn to not “play coy,” but to give the answer she intends so people don’t have to guess whether no really means no.)

I certainly don’t always get it right.  This morning’s kerfuffle just happened to stand out to me in light of the shared post from earlier in the week.

But as parents we’re surrounded by opportunities like this every day.  Disrespect (for people in general, and/or for authority, in particular), lack of self-control, and the like are often treated as inconsequential or even “cute” during the early years because of the contexts in which they appear, but they are not inconsequential.

Look beyond the specific actions to the roots and envision how those same roots will manifest as fruits in five or ten or twenty years, then address them accordingly.