A friend of mine, who we’ll call Yehoshua, was standing in the cereal aisle recently, one kid on each side, each one lobbying hard for a different box. His six-year-old daughter wanted “her” cereal. His eight-year-old son fought for “his.” The budget only had room for one. Someone was going home disappointed.
Now, Yehoshua’s a good guy. He genuinely hates letting people down, especially his kids. And aside from that solid character trait, he also knew exactly what letting down a child would mean. The anticipated tantrum. The crying. The scene in the parking lot. The moment of choice was at hand, and you could cut the tension with a knife . . . I mean, a spoon.
And then Hashem dropped a thought into his head: “You can’t always make everyone happy. Someone’s going to be disappointed. Your job, Reb Yehoshua, is to accept that, and do what you have to do.”
He picked one cereal, paid, and walked out. One child was delighted. The other cried for a bit. And then they both moved on. My friend noticed something interesting: his own inner calm about the outcome seemed to make the whole thing easier, both for him and the kids.
I think we’ll all agree that Yidden are geshmakeh people. Most of us genuinely want to make the people around us happy, our kids most of all. We bend over backwards. We negotiate, we compensate, we lose sleep over it.
But sometimes, a choice has to be made, and not everyone’s going to like it. When we accept that disappointing someone doesn’t make us bad parents, we give our kids something more valuable than the cereal they wanted. We show them that things don’t always go our way, and life continues anyhow. We come down, they calm down, and in the end, the other kid might agree to try the “gross” cereal and find out it was delicious all along.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 87.
