Week 17: Toyota Prius

Daddy's Matchbox welcomes everyone to 2011!

To kick off the New Year, I selected a hybrid to represent those New Year Resolutionish commitments I have set to be less wasteful and more conservation-oriented.

On a related note, I have also begun eating healthier (although independent of any resolutions), and have gained an unlikely supporter in these efforts: Racer Z, my ten-year-old son.

My son met my healthy eating efforts with so much enthusiasm that I initially thought it was some type of trick or trap. After all, isn't his prerogative to complain? 

For whatever his reason, however, he is ready to focus on healthy, and no small part of that might be modeling, which, for the 1,057th time in my life, I need to be reminded is a hypercharged developer of the way kids think and feel. What we do and model as adults, even more than what we say, drips and drops into the internal workings of our wards, helping them to become who they are becoming. Don't you hate that!?

Obviously, there are biggies -- smoke in front of your kids, they are statistically more likely to become smokers -- but the little ones so often slip past us.

 How do we handle the frustration of a political news story we see on television? Do we grumble to ourselves? Name call?  Inadvertently make some offhand pessimistic or nihilistic comment about this person or that group screwing or getting screwed or outwardly toss society into that downward  traveling handbag? Guess what --  they see and hear not the specifics, but the way of looking at the world. They take in how we respect or disrespect, or blame, or give up. Seriously?

How about that sigh and sideways look one makes when his or her spouse says something that gets the goat? What? I'm the only one that occasionally does that? Okay, then what about how we respond when a project, say plumbing (for me, a prime example), goes horrible, sprayingly out of control? What are we teaching them about pitfalls and failures and tennacity, which we all know are the building blocks of success, but which we all forget are the building blocks of success when water is shooting out of a pipe into our eye?

Modeling is so powerful, and has a chain reaction effect. Little ones want to be like older siblings. The other day we were driving and I caught the tailend of an argument between the ten-year-old and the four-year-old in which the youngest was crying, literally crying, "I'M A CHATTERBOX TOO!!"

I must have called Racer Z a chatterbox, and the younger one, wanting so much to be on equal footing with his bigger brother, was arguing that he was also one of these chatterbox things, whatever they are. My older son was explaining that no, Racer A didn't talk nearly as much as him, so was not a chatterbox. The argument grew in intensity, finally bringing in the parents, when the little one yelled, "DADDY?? AM I A CHATTERBOX TOO? A-- SAYS I'M NOT!! I WANT TO BE A CHATTERBOX!!!"

We're all modeling behavior for someone, so for this New Year of 2011, I'm tossing this into the Toy Car Bin of Should Be Obvious Resolutions That Often Get Past Me:

Pay Attention to the WAY I handle conflict and frustration in front of my children.

And guess what? I'm going to try to not fake this, but really be more healthy in the way that I approach life. When I can't, though, faking comes in a runner-up in this modeling competition. 

Happy New Year's everyone!!

Photo and creative staging of  Matchbox Toyota Prius by Phil Pekarcik -- interpret the copper balls as you will -- for me, they represent the elegance and wealth that 2011 will bring, but if you want to see them as something else, have at it, ya chatterbox!