Your kids won’t find that crummy elf in our house, so your secret is safe here.

Seems to me our jobs are to create magic in their lives, not fear and creepiness. I can totally see why people tell their kids about Santa…the belief is magic. We’re the buzzkill types who taught out kids early that Santa is an old story about someone who gives to people who are in need, and that the magic of giving makes December a fun, light-filled exciting month. Our son never told friends that Santa isn’t real because we told him, just like religion and rules, different families believe different things. Our family knows Santa is a story and we delight in seeing all the reminders of him through the month. Other families tell their kids he’s real, so don’t ruin their fun.

But that elf? That’s just wrong. I want our children to tell us what they want to, and to ask us whatever they want to without fear of reprisal or dismissal. People talk to each other about what happens in their day. Stuffed dolls do no talk, and do not violate the safety of being able to say whatever you want at home.

If feels terrifying to think that the walls have eyes and ears. And I hate the marketers who created and sold this jackass elf and all the families who use it to manipulate their kids.

A pox on their elves.

Putting myself in their shoes, though, really helps with the inevitable low patience, low energy moments. Hours. Days. I try to remember why a toddler wants to climb up on the counter and help with the mixing bowls. Why the bigger kid wants to look over my shoulder, chewing loudly, to see what I’m reading. They are so reasonable. I am not.

And therein lies the rub. It’s a brilliant goal, though. Striving every day to walk that crooked path…

I proofread before I pot, so why do I not see comment typos until it’s too late? *sigh* Not very good at anything, either.

I think I’d first be defeated, thinking Google was insinuting to anyone who asked that I wasn’t good at anything. Then I’d be quite reassured that at least something I wrote, somewhere somehow got me top billing on Google. You can’t ever be the best, right, you can just be better than the rest who showed up and participated. So you win the “I put my ideas on cyberpaper and people find them and read them.”

You’re the best of articulating something that a searchbot found. Yay, you!

At least they weren’t searching for defeatist and jack-of-all-trades porn…