A Kid in a Candy Store

 After school today, I realized that I needed to run some errands that couldn’t be done tomorrow.  My sister and the 3 youngest children were with me.  Gabi and Max fell asleep during the drive and Maggie (my sister) stayed in the van with them while they napped and I took Luke-Xavier in to get the things that I needed.  When I came out, they had woken up and were wondering when we were going into the store.  They didn’t realize they had been asleep.  Since I was done, I decided to take them over to the See’s Candy shop for a lollypop, since they were good for Maggie (granted, they were asleep).  Silly me, I let them decide what they wanted when we got inside.  Gabi picked a butterscotch lollypop, right away and was perfectly content with it.  Max, however, looked at the display cases filled with an array of wonderful chocolates and couldn’t make up his mind.  Twice he chose a lollypop, just to put it back again.  The woman behind the counter was patient and kind, thank goodness!  She suggested all sorts of pieces to him, only to have him start crying because he was so overwhelmed by the decision.  The whole time, my words about not giving children too many choices were running through my brain.  Finally I told him that I was going to pick a surprise and he had to close his eyes.  He was excited about that, but ended up sobbing again when he opened his eyes.  I don’t even think it was the particular piece of chocolate that made him upset, but that the “surprise” had not been some magical and amazing piece of candy that would make him forget about all other pieces.  Poor kiddo!  I finally put the “surprise” piece in the bag with the others and carried him out, crying into my shoulder, to the van.  He cried while I buckled him in and cried when I let him stick his hand in the bag to pick out a piece.  The whole experience just reinforced my belief that kids can’t be given a great amount of choices because it’s too overwhelming.

Good night~ 

This entry was posted on November 28, 2007 at 2:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized, children, family life, frustrating, ideas, kids, mom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.