My two favorite coaches…

My two children had a conversation today in the back of our car while arriving at the library:

N(10): E—, don’t take this the wrong way, but one thing you need to work on in your life is taking more responsibility for stuff.

E(8): N—! Just because I accidentally knocked your corn nuts on the floor of the car doesn’t mean that you get to be mean to me!

N: See now, E—, that’s exactly the kind of things I’m talking about. When something happens that you caused, you usually try to make excuses for it or shift the blame somewhere else. Like if you spill the milk at the table, and Dad tries to get you to clean it up, you want to talk about how you didn’t mean to do it. That may be true, but it doesn’t matter. The milk still needs to get cleaned up and you still need to clean it.

E: But you don’t always take responsibility for what you do, N—!

N: (patient tone) E—, there you go shifting the blame again. Think about this, if you were a grown-up and you drove a car while you were drinking, you could hit somebody and hurt them and then a policeman came and said that you hurt someone for hitting a car and you said it wasn’t your fault because you didn’t see them and that was only because you were drinking–now do you see why you need to work on this?

E: No! I don’t see, N—! I don’t wanna talk about this! I don’t like this!

snichols: It’s okay, E—, most grownups don’t want to think or talk about this kind of stuff too much either. Even I have trouble with taking responsibility for things. I’m grownup and I just paid several hundred dollars to spend a whole weekend to figure out what N— knows when he’s 10. You don’t have to talk about it until you’re ready.

E: I’ll never be ready! I never want to talk about it! You can’t make me talk about it! I need to get 3 books from the library about different salaries that you can earn in different careers. But it is not a comparation (sic)–it’s just different! And now N—-‘s made me too upset to do my research!

snichols: Sweetie, take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.

(but she was talking to herself…)