Parents are the Truly Unreasonable Ones

One of my favorite things about parents is our inexplicable and universal expectation that children are
logical. As if all we really have to do is reason with a kid, help them make sense of things, and then
everything will go well.

If you’ve ever had this conversation (and you have) you know exactly what I’m talking about:

Kid: My tummy is full [pushes plate away after moderate attempt at eating]

Parent: Ok, you may be excused.

Kid: Can I have dessert?

Parent: No, you said you were full.

Kid: Well, I’ve got room for a cookie.

You can call it kid logic (which is logic in name only) but this is probably better named parent irrationality. Why do we think a 3-year-old is going to grasp inconsistency, the physical properties of being satiated, or really anything other than the base reality that they want a cookie?

Maybe another example will better illustrate who’s being illogical here.

Around Halloween (or perhaps other times of the year if you’re around cosplayers or theatrical types) a young kid will be confronted by someone they know in a mask. The kid will startle, or jump back, or scream, and the parents will reassure them, “oh that’s just so-and-so in a mask.”

So the kid, in the throes of primal fear at an unusual or scary sight, reacts in the only way their body will let them and we think by just better explaining what’s going on we’re going to reason them out of their fear? We may be right that there’s no need to be afraid, or that it’s just so-and-so behind the mask but why in the world do we think the problem here is the 2-year-old just needs more education about disguises?

It’s the same thing when a child has a bad dream in the middle of the night. We’re quick to let them know, “it’s just a bad dream. Everything’s fine.” And this is objectively true.  However, to the kid, reality is that a monster giraffe was just trying to eat them in that very room so things most decidedly do NOT feel alright. Somehow, now that you’ve shed some light on the ethereal dream world living in their cortex, you expect them to immediately relax. Being afraid of a silly little dream is so illogical.

There are many more examples of this but you get the picture. We’d do ourselves a favor, and you might even call it reasonable, to stop pretending 3-year-olds are capable of sound logic. They’re not. But it’s easy to see where they get this.