Goofy Expectations...

As parents we have expectations of our children.  Some of these expectations are spoken and clearly communicated.  Like when you tell your child they must be respectful to their teacher.  Other expectations, however, are not as clearly communicated and can lead to unfair disappointment in your child’s actions or reactions to a situation. 

I had this experience a few weeks ago when we went to Disney World.  We scheduled a meal with the characters.  It was something I always wanted to do, so now that I’m the mommy who makes the plans, I get to do it! We chose a breakfast with the classic Disney Characters-Mickey, Donald, etc.

Goofy is my favorite! I’m one of those nerds that still has the Goofy hat, slippers, and clock I bought at Disney when I was 10.  We hadn’t been able to see Goofy in any of our character encounters thus far, but he was going to be at breakfast! In preparation for the upcoming meeting with my most favorite character, we watched all the movies we could find with Goofy, talked about how cool he is, and even talked about how exciting it will be to meet him. 

We get to the morning of the breakfast and I’m like a 3 year old on Christmas-totally ecstatic, all I could talk about was how we were finally going to meet Goofy today.  We are seated at our table and the characters start coming around one at a time.  Donald was first.  Both the girls jumped out of their seats for a photo, excitedly handed their autograph books to him, and were delighted to blow him kisses as he said goodbye. 

Next up: Goofy! (I was beside myself with joy that my kids would soon get to see why I think he's so awesome!) He comes to the table and Annie TOTALLY flipped out, but not in the amazingly ecstatic way I’d been prepping her.  She jumped into my arms and began screaming, “NOOOOO!!!” Now, she’s 2, I get it, he’s big.  BUT we’ve seen TONS of characters and this is the first time she’s reacted negatively.  I tried to gently pursuade her that Goofy was fine, but to no avail.  After taking a picture of Natalie and Goofy (the one above!), he was on his way.  Annie was immediately at ease again and spent the rest of the breakfast cheerfully greeting Mickey, Daisy, Minnie, AND Pluto (?!)

Like I said before, I know this is a normal reaction for a 2 year old, you just never know what you’re going to get with them sometimes.  So why was I so disappointed? B/c I made the parenting mistake of imposing an unspoken, selfish expectation on Annie's reaction.  She knew I was excited to meet Goofy, but had no idea that my positive experience was based on her reaction to this big, scary dude in a costume! If I was being honest, I hadn't really thought about it that way until that moment either!

As I began to ponder this, I realized how unfair it is to my children.  They are their own people. God created them to be unique and take in the world in their own way, not mine.  With little kids I think we too often forget that.  It's OK for them to dislike something-they are little people with real personalities that cue their preferences.  I’m not saying that we should never have expectations of our children.  What I am saying is as a parent, I need to be asking myself a few very important questions. 

The first: Is this expectation selfish? More specifically, Am I just expecting they act a certain way b/c I want to be fulfilled or satisfied in my own experience?

The second: Are my expectations clearly verbally communicated ahead of time? 20 minutes into the church service my 4 year old starts talking and I get upset/scold her, but I didn’t tell her beforehand that she would be expected to sit quietly until the service was done-that's an unfair scolding b/c I didn't effectively communicate that expectation with her!

The third: Is this expectation realistic for my kid to succeed at? I can expect my 2 year old to be able to sit through a 4 hour Bible Study and explain to her that she is to sit quietly the whole time, but at 2 years old, even if she really wanted to, she just isn’t old enough to pull that off, plain and simple! 

Clearly, my desire for Annie to love Goofy was just plain selfish.  That being said, I enjoyed our breakfast anyway! Annie keeps talking about how neat it was to meet Goofy, so apparently in her mind, he’s a pretty cool character….from a distance! 

This is a good lesson no matter how old your kids are.  From now on, I encourage you (I'm going to do it too!) to try to keep my expectations clear and fair so my kids can be who God created them to be as they encounter all that this world has to offer.