Asymmetry, Power and Righteousness

Some time back, one of my 6 year old daughter’s friends was being told by her parents that she shouldn’t lie. The girl turned around and asked:

“Do you never lie?”

Of course, we do. And kids figure that sooner or later. And then we get dragged deeper and deeper into the land of commands like “Do as I say, not as I do” and retorts like “Hypocrite” (or words to that effect). All that’s par for the course of parenting, of course…

And then they graduate to the next level of this tussle. Like the time I got this monologue from my daughter recently:

“So you lied to me back then on such-and-such topic. But remember, I am the Maharaja and you are the slave, so you cannot lie to me. But as the Maharaja, I can lie to you. As many times as I want.”

Asymmetry: that’s a topic they get so very well!

Another topic they love is the power of authority. Like when they are made class monitor, even if it’s by rotation and only for a week each. My daughter relished the power to boss around her classmates, to write down the troublemakers’ names on a list, the imagined consequence that those who she named to the teacher would be banned from the universally loved Games period…

Getting carried away when they get into the righteous mode is fun to watch. When a talkative boy was made the monitor, my daughter pointed out the time he declared that he would make a list of those who talked when they shouldn’t. Huh, she scoffed, then his own name would be top of the list every time. And he doesn’t write his friends’ names, she’d point out with indignation:

“What is all that, huh?”

Given this is how all 6 year olds are, I have no trouble believing that this is how my daughter will probably react when given pocket money for the first time: