I’ll just die!
“I’ve got to have this or I’ll just die!“ she wailed. For ten minutes this seven-year old grabbed things off the shelves at Target and repeatedly, almost non-stop, said, ”I’ve got to have this or I’ll just die. I’ve got to have THIS or I’ll die.“ She only stopped long enough to look at her mother with her hands on her hips and demand, ”Do you WANT me to die? Don’t you understand I’ll just die if I don’t get this?!“ I couldn’t stop laughing, so I turned and walked away, only to find myself next to another mother, pushing her cart with her seven-year-old son in it.
He looked up at her and said, ”Why do you hate me?“ She stopped dead in her tracks. I said, ”Wait until he’s 14 and that’s a declarative sentence, not a question!“ She asked him, ”Why do you think I hate you?“ and he said, ”Well, you put this box on top of me.“ He was sitting in the shopping cart with a large empty plastic storage bin (all of half a pound) crowding him in the cart. He didn’t want to walk, so he had, his mother explained, to share the cart with what they were buying. He was too big to fit in the child seat at the handle.
My first response to both these kids was, ”Wow. They’ve got a long, hard life ahead of them.“ The world would be very cruel and hard if they thought they would die over not getting everything they wanted, or had to share a cart because they didn’t want to walk. No small wonder so many teenagers, adults and kids are so depressed, demanding and disgruntled. They’re self-centered, unrealistic and out-of-touch with reality.
When we have a hair trigger response that throws things like wanting a five-dollar toy, or a new t-shirt, or a knick-knack into the realm of ”I’ve gotta have this or I’ll die,” or we equate our laziness and the consequence of having to share a shopping cart with a plastic bin with someone hating us, there’s not really a lot of room for compassion, or generosity for other people. The children aren’t to blame - yet. They’ve learned their insensitivity from parents who are offended, demanding, and unreasonable.
As always, looking at what’s happening around me as a reflection of what’s happening inside me I have to ask myself when I’m being unreasonable, offended and demanding. That *inner child* that pouts when I can’t afford everything I want, or feels hated when I’ve been slighted, doesn’t need spoiling or coddling. She needs love, the kind of love that only I can give myself. When I *get real* about what I really want, or need, then I’m so much less likely to feel, think or believe that “I’ll just die if I don’t get this.”
What is your inner child screaming for? And how are you treating them?
