Resolution of the Week

There is some serious what I would call "guy noise" going on behind me -- Tim and Ian are playing an online video game from the Lego website that consists of knights assaulting a medieval castle (can I count that as history for the day?) and there are all manner of groovy music, clunks, thumps, splats, etc., punctuated by the sound effects coming from the guys themselves -- "aw, sweet!" "ooh!" "arghh!" -- and then something probably only Ian would say, "I know, let's fetch that other guy." Fetch? Sometimes I think my child belongs in another century!

OK, so on to the topic at hand. My parenting goal for the week was inspired by this post, (it's long, and the part I'm referring to is quite a ways down) and I can sum it up in just two words: Just Say Yes. Wait, that's three words. Anyway, of course I don't mean I'm remaking myself as a permissive, anything-goes kind of parent. I'm not saying YES to hitting, refusing to cooperate, name-calling, using "good" instead of "well" (as in, "I did good") and other moral issues. :-) I'm talking about the times when I find myself blurting out "No" like some kind of automaton that's had the Parent Program installed and needs to find the override button. I'm talking about the "no"s that arise from my own laziness (let's call this Situation A), or even the projection of my own personal preferences onto the requested outcome (Situation B). Example A: It's 8:50 p.m. and Ian comes to me with a cardboard box, imploring me to help him carve it into a castle (he's found directions on that Lego website). Truly truly, I just don't feel like it. Then I realize that I hardly ever put much effort anymore into participating in his inconvenient ideas and schemes, and why not set aside the glass of ice water I was about to fling on it, and just get out the scissors and do it? Example B: Eliza asks if they can sleep in their new hideout, i.e. an empty cabinet they discovered, and I think it's a bad idea because they'd be way too cramped, but hey, why not let them figure that out for themselves? (They forgot by bedtime anyway.) Or this morning, Eliza asked if she could have butter on top of the cream cheese that I had spread on her pumpkin bread. I open my mouth for the automated "no" (after all, that just sounds gross to me, butter WITH cream cheese), but just in time, realize that in fact I *can* let her make her own judgment as to the pleasantness of various bread-spreading permutations.
So, stuff like that. I guess I just get tired of being a wet blanket sometimes, especially when there's no good reason for it.