So, how much is too much?

I always say I grew up in Chapel Hill, but "technically" I grew up outside of chapel hill with a hillsborough address, yet living closer to chapel hill than any place else. So, we were in the country, on some acres, in between two dairy farms. My dad and mom built our house. Our geodesic dome house (that is for another blog people!). I loved our house, our "country living", our outside time, our garden, our above ground pool that turned into an ice skating rink in the winter time. I thought we had it all, we were rich, we lived high on the hog. We took beach vacations every year, we went skiing in vermont many times, we trekked to Canada to see my dad's family. I never seemed to want for much. Target did not exist, and I survived my childhood. We rarely went "out to dinner", and when we did it was a BIG deal. We took one 'school shopping' trip a year to the peaches and cream outlet in burlington.

So, now I am a mom. I have young children. They have more today that I ever thought possible for myself as a child. For them, it is commonplace. It is not a big deal to get a new pair of shoes, go out to dinner, watch a movie. They have their own room. They do not want to share a room. They live in a house that could eat the home I grew up in, and I have done this to them.

This year for a couple of days of my oldest daughter's track out (she is in year round school) we went to disney world. We did it "on the cheap" so to speak....we drove down there, we stayed at a hotel paid for by Tony's hotel points, we only went to the parks for 3 days. Yet, somehow, Tyler (the oldest daughter) was disappointed. I want to believe that she was disappointed that disney did not live up to her expectations, that she believed there would be rides every place and that cinderella would follow her around the park. But, in some way I also know that things are not as "special" to her because she has so much.

My four year old knows how to "pause" the television. I will turn a show on for her, and in the middle of it I will hear her go to the bathroom. She will pause the television so that she will not miss anything. I remember the days when everyone would wait for the commercials and if someone dared to get up for any reason, everyone would yell "hey, could you get me _____" while you are up. Now, we simply pause the television so that we can have it all, without even trying.

I know, unfortunately that this stems from me. I talk until I am blue in the face about empathy, and how many people do not have as much as we do, and how I grew up, how my husband grew up. But, I know that I need to reel them in, the problem is I like having 132 channels of television, and going out to eat, and pausing the television! So this will be harder than I want it to be!

So, maybe I will just tell them the pause button is broken and we will take little steps from there.