They say it all the time. When will this be over? Are we there yet? Why is this taking so long? Do we have to? It’s whiny. It’s annoying. You ask them to stop. But in getting upset, you miss the real opportunity to teach them and to explain to them what they’re really saying.
In his book Travels with Epicurus, the writer Daniel Klein recalls a formative moment: I remember one long-ago evening, on an overcrowded train to Philadelphia, hearing a young woman moan to her mother, “God I wish we were there already!” Her white-haired mother replied eloquently, “Darling, never wish away a minute of your life.”
They’re kids, so they don’t understand how short a time we actually have on this planet. Even you, as an adult, sometimes forget it. That you get only eighteen summers at home with your kid. That you drop them off at school only a little more than a thousand mornings. That you’ll get only so many breakfasts together, so many trips to the store, so many waits in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.
To wish that away? To waste those moments, those minutes? To want it to be over soon? What a tragedy. We can’t take any time with our kids for granted. And we have to teach them now, before they regret it, not to waste a minute of this life that we have.