I Want

We have entered the relentlessly exhausting world of, "I Want".  I want this toy, I want to play, I want more popsicles. All day long I Want I Want I Want. If she doesn't get it, I hear, "But I WANT it!"

I knew this was coming. I was a kid of many wants myself. I can relate. But in the hundreds of years since I was a small child, I've actually become very successful at tempering my wants. Or maybe just expecting not to get what I want, so not bothering to make a big deal of it.

As with most things, I blame myself for this behavior. She is my only little one, and sometimes, ok, a lot of the time, I can't help myself in the store. I love to see the delighted smile on her face when I buy her a little toy. I didn't get this a lot when I was a kid (I had lots of toys, but we weren't overindulged), and I love to do it because I can. Because how nice is it to live in a world where someone considers what you want and your wishes are granted. I want her to be happy, I think. What's the harm, I think. Well, I'm beginning to get it a little. If she gets something every time, she will expect it. And she does.

My husband is no better. He is fully on the hook for the request I heard the other day. The request that made me break out into a cold sweat while my heart stopped a little.

"Mommy, I want a Barbie Dream House."

You want WHAT?!?!? Nooooooooooooo, anything but that! You don't know what you're saying, little child. You don't really want that. How do you even know such a thing exists??? Oh, because you saw it on TV watching cartoons with Daddy? DAMN IT. Damn it all to hell. I will not have a Barbie Dream House in my house ever, if I can help it. You can have another kind of dream house, maybe, and other dolls, but not that combination. I just can't do that.

Aside from me being overindulgent and my husband not thinking it's a big deal for her to be bombarded with marketing, I blame the materialistic world we live in. We are always on the hunt for the new next best thing. We all participate in it. We all feed into it. At Christmastime, she got asked on the daily what she wanted for Christmas. Does she have a list? What is she asking Santa for? She didn't really get it then, but she gets it now!

When she's denied a request, she just says, well maybe Santa will bring it to me. Or maybe Grammy will get it for me. Or maybe we can go to the store tomorrow and get it. That's how it works, right? You want, and you get. Simple.

I'm going to make an extremely conscientious effort to manage this better. I'm going to restrain from getting her something every time. I'm going to help her set expectation that sometimes you just don't get what you want all the time, and that's ok. Maybe I'll teach her the Rolling Stones song that my mom used to sing to me. It went something like this:

"You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

Well played, Rolling Stones. You were so right, all along.