The Fair Only Comes Once a Year

The mantra, "That's not fair" comes from my children at least once a day. And for the older ones who know better than to say it...they think it and communicate it with body language. The answers to this are the same my parents gave to me..."Life's not fair" or my favorite "The fair comes once a year". But do these litte quips deal with the heart of that comment?

Who promised our kids a fair life? Don't we, even as adults, look for fairness? Isn't that what has led to all players getting trophies and a "good effort" being treated as well as a winning team? Why is it that we have become the generation of "fair" parents? Is the world fair? Should it be? In life there are winners and losers. There are life lessons on both sides of that coin. Sometimes the bigger lessons come on the losing side, but we are robbing our children of those if we rescue them and try to "even" everything up.

We have a generation of kids coming out of college expecting to be treated fairly. I would hope that they will be for the most part, but as we all know, they will face unfair moments in their life and if they have not been equipped on how to handle those moments it could be a hard road with great consequence. What can we do as parents to prepare our kids? Isn't the mantra "that's not fair" really saying "that's not equal"?

One of the main questions I have gotten about our chore system is deciding on how much to pay out to each child. We struggled with this and from the response I have gotten others struggle as well. What if you have two children close in age for instance? My youngest two are 15 months apart. We pay the older more and the younger less. The younger angel was not happy (that is an understatement...this angel has no trouble expressing herself) about this and asked (demanded) why she made the least. My husband, being the business man he is, explained that there was something called tenure that meant a person had been there longer. He explained that at his company a new employee may come in and do the same work as someone who has been there 8 years and make less money. He also showed her that with hard work and picking up extra jobs she could make more with a little hustle. Guess what? First month...she made the most. If we had given in and evened it up or even closed the gap on what we paid we would have robbed her of the opportunity to show us and herself she could work smart and hard.

So many kids are coming out of college today screaming for more and doing nothing to earn it and then feeling frustrated and unappreciated they quit that job in search of someone who will see in them the talents that their parents saw. Let's be careful as we encourage our kids that we don't set them up to fail in the real world by teaching them fair is equal and they deserve that. We each have to earn that.

Yes, there may be more crying now, but I hope that the lesson will prevent crying later because in life, the fair only comes once a year!