Is It Just Me – Digging, Digging, Dug

Hunched over the kitchen table with his shoulders glued to his ear-lobes, my seven year-old son, Harrison, dug for dinosaur fossils in a clay block that he’d received as a birthday party present. For three hours, I’d been inhaling red dust and reminding myself why not choosing archaeology as a career had been the right decision.

Five minutes later, Harrison’s eyes burned with the brightness of new knowledge as he discovered that wetting the clay with tap water made it easier to chip away. Wet. Red. Dust.

As humans, we possess the ability to stand upright, certainly after we’ve had our first cup of coffee, but what really separates us from the beasts is that we don’t have to live in muck! And, now, my kitchen, the place in which I cut bagels for my loved ones and sometimes stand sleep-eating potato chips deep into the wee hours of the morning, looked like the aftermath of a mud-wrestling tournament.

While I wanted to share Harrison’s excitement for finding fake fossils, my instincts advised me to haul out the Wet-Vac and simply suck up the entire kitchen. What was I missing?

When I was a kid, the closest I came to messing up the kitchen was working on a vanilla cake recipe in my Easy Bake Oven. I remember that some rogue icing landed on our white counter-top, but my mother didn’t notice. She was too busy ensuring that I didn’t radiate myself with the battery-powered oven.

I was raised to revere cleanliness. Anything involving dirt occurred outside in the garden or sandbox. When my brother and I wanted to work on art projects, we were first required to spread enough newspapers to accommodate a litter of Great Dane puppies. For my birthdays, my friends gave me tidy things such as Little Kiddles, yo-yos and macramé kits.

Now, my own kitchen was in squalor because Harrison’s friend had treated him to the gift of gunk. What was this child’s mother thinking? Had she not memorized the Ten Commandments of Birthday Party Going and Throwing carried down from Mount Consideration:1.You should never send your fevered, coughing, snot-spewing child to a party protesting that he’s really feeling much better than he sounds.

2.You should never give live pets in a loot bag. Many people don’t want to have to buy an aquarium for the little beta fighting fish their child received on his way out your door.

3.You should never buy a drum set for a toddler unless you hate its parents.

4.You should never make a party at a location further than fifty miles away from the town centre. There ARE trampoline places closer to your home.

5.You should never be more than ten minutes late to pick up your child from a party.

6.You should always include the $50 worth of batteries required to operate the twelve dollar toy you purchased.

7.You should never offer Red Bull as one of the beverage selections at a six year-old’s party.

8.You should never give toys that take more than five days to assemble.

9.You should never allow your spouse to teach the kids at your party how to stick licorice up their noses. They won’t need this skill for college.

10.You should never ever give a present that can and will turn the recipient’s home into a declared disaster area.

I have never broken these commandments. My children are so prompt for the parties they attend that we often arrive at the venue before the birthday family. I tape fresh batteries to our gifts. The presents we give kids are fun, inanimate and made of plastic or wood that doesn’t crumble.

As I crouched on the floor, wiping up the sludge, I wondered what I’d done to offend the mother of the boy who had brought the offending gift into our home.Our sons were good friends and I’d always greeted the mom with comradely cheer. I was pretty sure Harrison had never thrown up on her kid. This wasn’t a revenge gift, so why?

Harrison suddenly leapt up, his sapling-thin arms raised in jubilation.

“Mom, I dug it up. It’s a baby pterodactyl fossil! Do you see?”

I saw, but not only the results of his efforts. My son was electrified with happiness.

I cleaned up the kitchen with a half-smile and didn’t even complain when the treasured pterodactyl fossil remained ignored on the counter for days until I finally threw it into the recycling bin. I saw that the real gift here was the chance to travel the road to discovery, which cannot be measured by the end result nor diminished by the mess it creates. The hours Harrison spent digging gave him joy. Of course, this was nothing compared to the joy I felt when my kitchen was sparkling and I could resort to my late-night chip expeditions in clean, bare feet.

"Connected Parenting advises us not just how to parent, but—far more important—who to be as parents. The therapeutic methods suggested by Jennifer Kolari are based not on simple-minded behavioural solutions, but on building warm, nurturing relationships with our children, with insight and compassion not only for their little flaws, but also for our own larger ones."
—Gabor Maté, M.D.

"A must read for parents, educators, and any other adults who want to connect in a deeply caring and positive way with the children in their lives."
—Barbara Coloroso