Choose Your Own Adventure Kids
When I was a kid, there was a time when choose your own adventure books were popular. If you’re not familiar with them, these books were targeted at young adults and gave the reader a measure of control over the story by selecting the actions certain characters took at vital junctures.
You’d get 20 pages into the book, be a spy running from a bad guy, and be faced with the options of either hiding in the stairwell (turn to page 37) or jumping off the balcony with unknown terrain below (turn to page 46).
Once you made your decision (no peeking) you turned to that page and the story continued until the next choice came up. Or you chose poorly and died.
It was fun, especially when it was new, and made you think about things like plot twists and all the ways an author can kill off a character. And it also developed a sense for the choice you probably should take if you wanted the story to go on.
Apparently my boys think their lives are a choose your own adventure book. And they really suck at it.
For example, the 2-year-old opens the pantry and is faced with two options: A) ask Mom or Dad for help because the snack he wants is too high up on the shelf. B) Gather as many quasi-stackable items as possible, stack them up into a perilously leaning tower, and then squirrel hop from the tower onto a pantry shelf to get the snack. And he’s like, “B, for sure. Final answer.”
Or when the 5-year-old is practicing riding his bike without training wheels. He’s riding along the sidewalk unassisted and is approaching a curve. Should he A) maintain a firm grip on the handlebar and pedal through the turn as he’s successfully done 1,000 times before or B) yell “whoa, whoa!” in dramatized fear while jerking the handlebar back and forth in exaggerated fashion causing the bike to tip over and send him sprawling into a fresh mound of fire ants?
These are not difficult decisions. And yet, in the choose your own adventure book of their lives, they’d have more success just flipping a coin. At least sometimes they’d make the right choice if only by chance.
More adventures.
The 4-year-old is standing next to a road and spots his older brother on the other side playing. Should he A) take off across the road like he’s sitting on a lit bottle rocket without looking, or B) ask his dad if he can cross the street and wait for his dad to make sure there are no cars coming...and also to inform him that boy on the other side of the street is not his older brother who’s actually standing right behind him?
I suppose in this case he had committed to option A so incredibly fast there was no time to consider any other option. In effect he’s going through the choose your own adventure book by looking at the “turn to page x” area first and turning without reading the story. This is not the best way to read these books. Or to cross streets.
And sometimes they break the mold and just invent their own endings. The 4-year-old is at church and faced with two options. Should he A) walk through the door to the right of the plate glass window in order to go into the courtyard with his friends, or B) walk through the door to the left of the window to go play with his friends?
Neither. He creates option C: take off at full tilt and plow into the plate glass window like a battering ram knocking himself silly while amazingly failing to shatter the window.
I can’t account for all the reasons my kids make the decisions they do. All I know is, in the choose your own adventure book that is parenting these four boys, each new chapter is full of surprises.