If your kid doesn’t want to do something, nine times out of ten, it’s not worth the fight.
Save your fight for that one time it’s important.
Building an easel for a child takes three hours.
Read the instructions first. Watch the video online first. Try not to resent the guy who built it in the video for saying it’s easy to put together.
Do not attempt to build a child’s easel while watching Boston play the Indiana Pacers in the NBA playoffs.
Especially not if the game gets close.
You will have to dismantle that easel and start over, punk.
It’ll be past midnight until you get it together.
Don’t worry about paint splatter.
Buy washable paint.
If your kid doesn’t want to go to another kid’s birthday party, that’s ok. He can stay home in the air conditioning with his mom.
You should go to the birthday party anyway.
It’s more fun.
You won’t need to worry about what your kid is doing.
You can hang in the kitchen chatting with the other parents.
They will think it’s cool that you came to the party to hang with them even if Freddy couldn’t make it.
This takes a surprising amount of courage to do and yet it is worth it.
If your kid doesn’t want to glue pieces of paper onto a piece of card, it’s not a problem.
Even his teacher thinks that’s a conformist thing to do.
Your kid is an artist.
He wants to imitate Jackson Pollock at the playgroup.
The teacher tells you: “Buy him an easel.”
So you do.
Don’t worry about paint splatter.
Buy washable paint.
It’s been years since you wrote poetry.
Like more than quarter of a century.
You had an editor once who had a “no poetry” rule.
You have come to resent poetry for this and other sad reasons.
Being a parent softens your position on this.
Which is probably a good thing.
Don’t worry about poetry splatter.
Buy washable poetry.
Art and courage and poetry are contagious.
When the playgroup closes for a coronavirus scare, what is this, 2020?
Don’t worry about the contagious coronavirus.
Get the easel out.
Your kid will paint the sunrise in like ten seconds and walk away when he’s done.
That’s probably the last time you’ll need that easel.
Like two hundred bucks and worth it.
Don’t worry about burning money.
Burning money is being alive.
Your child might even thank you for it one day if you’re lucky and the stars align for half a minute.
But their gratitude or otherwise is beside the point.
It’s your gratitude.
—Matt Davis is a communications consultant and writer for a wide variety of clients. He also teaches yoga and lives with his wife and son in New York.
