"Because I said So"


“Because I said so”. It’s a phrase every parent uses with their kids. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to pull rank, but we don’t live in an ideal world:
-         Some things are just too complicated to explain to a kid;
-         Sometimes we’re not in a mood;
-         There’s no time to get into all that;
-         And last but not least, kids can be a pain deliberately. Pretending not to understand, testing how far they can push you, enjoying asking “Why” to whatever you say.

And then there’s this other reason I stumbled upon based on this chat between my daughter and my wife. It started with my daughter asking whether my wife had stopped going to the gym. My wife replied that she was finishing the gym at office during lunch time, so it wasn’t visible to the kid anymore. This is how the conversation continued:
Kid: “Really? You go to the gym during lunch time? How long is your lunch break?”
Wife: “An hour and a half.”
Kid: “Wow! You’re so lucky. We just get half an hour. And then get shouted at if we don’t finish lunch within that time.”
Wife: “It’s not like that. One has to finish one’s work, but what else one does is left to the individual.”
As you must have imagined, it was not making any sense to the kid by now. In theory, my wife could have next explained how time have changed from the minute by minute monitoring of shop floor workers to the complete lack of it for the information worker. Maybe she could have also gotten into why that change still produces results, even better results. But, as Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, that’s not a practical option at all because:
“That’s the problem, all right, where to start. To reach him (or something) you have to back up and back up, and the further back you go, the further back you see you have to go, until what looked like a small problem of communication turns into a major philosophic enquiry.”

Obviously we can’t enter “a major philosophic enquiry” with a kid on every topic, so we settle for good old “Because I told you so” instead.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJuly 9, 2018 at 1:04 PM

    My own conclusions are quite similar. Children can ask this deceptively simple question, "Why"? repeatedly and innocently; adults can lose papience on that pretty fast! The next tormentor question is also a simple, "How?" Questions apart, l also find that wonderment is an emotion rich in abundance in children. Adults, except those who retain that ability are less capable of wonderment.

    With all the requirement for patience and tolerance, I always find that children bring uncomplicated cheers for us.

    Keep up your blogs on this subject. They fascinate.

    ReplyDelete

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