Hopping, Copying

I had a friend once whose husband was convinced that our environment doesn't influence our behavior.  Without telling her husband, my friend did an experiment.  She started referring to drinks as "pop" instead of "soda."  Before long, her husband started doing the same thing, and she proved her point that people and other influences around us do, indeed, affect our behavior.

From having kids, I know this to be true.  I am impatient, snarky and critical.  And now I have seven mini-me's who are impatient, snarky and critical.  In addition, they have all adopted Scott's bad habit of casting blame when something goes wrong.  It's become a funny joke when Scott does it, but the kids do it without humor.  So now our house sounds like the Senate floor an a particularly bad day.

The worst part is that, when our little brood of skilled quarrelers is at their game, I am mortified to think that they are parroting me.  As if to drive home the notion that children mimic their parents, our household last week resembled an Easter Bunny training facility.  In the days after my foot surgery, I hopped around on one foot.  It didn't take long before everyone was hopping from place to place.  They didn't say why.  They just started hopping instead of walking.  All of them.  Like little rabbit robots.  Our own warren of bellacose bunnies, hopped up on criticism and sarcasm.

And it was clearly all my fault.

I always tell my kids that they will be each others' best friends when they grow up.  I paint a picture of Ari helping Golda or Ruby get their wedding dress on, or Freestone helping Xanthe move into her dorm room, or Golda taking Ruby's kids shopping.  I say, "You might as well get along, because you are going to be very important to each other when you grow up."

Somehow, words that travel from a mother's mouth to a child's ear get lost in translation.  Sure, they pick up on the smart-alecky asides I mumble out of the corners of my mouth.  Advice, on the other hand...I'm convinced I sound like Charlie Brown's parents in the cartoons.  Like a phonograph under water.  Sometimes I think that Scott and I are really nice people who just happened to get a particularly acrimonious batch of children.  Deep down, though, I know I have the power to influence their behavior, and perhaps I haven't taken that influence seriously enough.

I am trying to demonstrate more patience and less criticism.  I am trying not to snatch Xanthe's backpack out of her hands and shove her out the door, throwing the backpack behind her, even though it takes her ten years to close a zipper.  I am trying not to throw up my hands in despair, crying, "Why did you even bring this homework home?  It's stupid!  Tell your teacher it's stupid!"  I am trying not to lay on the horn when I've been waiting in the car long enough to hear the entire cycle of news, all the movements of a Mahler symphony and the Diane Rehm Show.  Both hours of it.

But see?  Now I'm being cheeky and facetious.  Dang it.  My kids don't have a chance!