Pearls: Setting and attaining our goals

Matt Pearl

The lessons I have learned during my years as a parent are many in number, but two take precedence in my mind over many of the others:

The first is that there is no shame whatsoever in repeating the irritating clichés my own parents used while bringing up me and my sister (i.e. ‘If you two don’t straighten up, we are leaving and there will BE no treats!).

And the second is that much of the rest of what I tell my children I am making up in the moment. Usually, I sound like an idiot, or like a guy who after almost a decade as a dad still has no idea what he is doing.

But sometimes I splutter out something useful.

My two oldest children were recently dragging their feet on the task of reading their library books. My wife and I obviously want our children to be readers, so we began to apply the appropriate pressure tactics to jump start their literary practices.

So my wife got the first turn at it – the typical scenario, to be honest – and used the respectable tactic I call the ‘Deadline Threat Maneuver.’ In taking this approach, she was able to leverage the return date of the books themselves much in the way the Wicked Witch of the West turns over the hourglass to terrorize Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Please understand I am not actually comparing my wife with such a fictional villain: I am merely stating that I married someone skilled in the art of keeping mildly misbehaving children uncomfortable. It’s a trait that is quite attractive, actually.

By contrast, I took another approach that I like to call ‘Guilt as Logic,’ a tactic where I use plain, unemotional common sense to make children feel horrible about themselves.

‘When you check out a library book,’ I told them, ‘you are making TWO promises: one to the librarian that you will bring your book back intact, and on time; the second is to yourself, that you will read the book you have checked out.’

I chased it with the ‘Guilt as Logic’ standard closer: the question that has only one reasonable answer, and by my children giving the answer, they actually condemn themselves. It’s brilliant, if I do say so myself.

‘Now, you don’t want to lie to the librarian by not taking back your book, right? Well, then why is it okay to lie to yourself by not reading it? I had them. I’m expecting my surprise nomination for the ‘Parent of the Year’ to arrive by registered mail sometime this week.

But that thing that often happens when I instruct my children – that thing where I put myself up against the standard I have set for them – happened and I fell short of the mark, as usual.

How many times have I set a goal and failed to achieve it? More than I can count. How often do I keep my word to others, but deceive myself in an effort to appease someone else’s expectations or notions? Fairly often.

That librarian might get those books back on time, but if nobody read them, what really transpired in the deal? A book bought with public money was checked out by a young reader, who in turn kept the book in his home for the agreed amount of time, then returned the object – essentially unused – to the site where he borrowed it. A librarian put it back on the shelf where it previously went, and the world was none the wiser.

And the mind of the child did not grow, and he purpose of the library remained unfulfilled.

I need to take the lesson and keep the positive promises I make to myself: I deserve it, and the world deserves for you and for me to fulfill our potential. If we treat the opportunities we seize in this life as promises we are making to ourselves and to our posterity, we might be surprised how quickly this world would improve.

Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany and Grant City.