Erik Rhey, our favorite environmentalist, gardener, writer, father (we could go on, but you get the idea) explains how to keep from going off the deep end when it comes to all the indulgences (read: bribes) we give our kids.
Teaching children moderation is one of the hardest lessons there is, in my opinion. And please, kids, do as I say, not as I do. There are occasions too numerous to count in which I ate too much, drank too much, said too much, spent too much, drove too fast or otherwise indulged in the excesses of uncontrolled adulthood. Sometimes I do all of the above in one night.
But when it comes to parenting, I’ve always tried to keep my daughter walking the Middle Way (as it’s known in Buddhism) with desserts, video entertainment, beverages, toys, bedtime, etc. As a gatekeeper, I swore it my duty to restrict access and limit portions of anything decadent or unhealthy. I am the lunch lady of her existence, keeping all the fun behind a sneeze guard and doling out tiny portions into the molded fiberglass reservoirs of her life tray. In fact, I have the reputation for being a notorious portion miser when doling out ice cream at big family dinners. No one gains weight on my watch!
My wife, on the other hand, practices the art of measured indulgence. Most of the time, she ensures that eating healthy and restricted TV is the norm. But when the circumstances merit, indulgence is permitted and even celebrated. I realized recently that she has developed her version of the 80/20 rule. Originally coined by business consultant Joseph Juran and popularized by the books of Richard Koch, the 80/20 rule states that “80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” In business, the typical examples are that 20% of your clients create 80% of your revenue or 20% of your employees create 80% of your company’s output. In personal motivation, it’s often stated that 20% of your activities result in 80% of your overall happiness. This seems especially true in New York, where millions of us give 80% of our time to high-earning, soul-crushing corporate jobs and spend the other 20% on our own creative and artistic pursuits.
In the parenting context, my wife has shown me that trying to walk the Middle Way all the time is impossible—and a sure recipe for feeling like a failure. Real-life parenting is about what you do most of the time. If you set healthy and realistic boundaries and enforce them 80% of the time, it’s probably okay to let the kiddos go hog-wild ape-sh*t 20% of the time (give or take a few percentage points).
On airplanes, my daughter can stay enraptured with an iPad for five hours because she only gets 10 minutes of it 80% of the time. Also, we don’t feel guilty about chocolate for breakfast on Easter Sunday or those Saturdays when she gets ice cream twice a day. (Well, maybe a little guilty.) And as it turns out, we end up having 80% of our fun together as a family on those 20% days when we throw caution to the wind.
Our hope is that teaching her measured indulgence via the 80/20 rule will give her a healthier, flexible, and more realistic view on balancing her life. Now, all I have to do is wait for her to fall asleep before I can spend my Tuesday night downing a bottle of Cab and a pint of Americone Dream while binge-watching three seasons of “The Walking Dead” until 2 a.m.
Erik Rhey is a writer, editor and content strategist. He is the father of a 4-year-old daughter and a son on the way.