Luring a leprechaun is tricky, and sometimes so is keeping a happy attitude
Carrier of all things wonderful, Fulfiller of whims and needs alike, Occupier of our entire (and I do mean entire) recycle bin.
I speak, of course, of the Amazon box.
When my stepkids came over last week, there was yet another of these glorious cardboard vessels on our kitchen counter, about the size of a shoe box. My stepdaughter eyed it triumphantly.
“I can use it for my leprechaun trap!” she declared.
She handed her dad and me a piece of paper from her backpack, and we read it. Apparently she wasn’t kidding: Her homework for the weekend was to create a leprechaun trap as a family project.
That Amazon box of ours had a higher calling than the recycle bin this time.
It joined us on an excursion to the basement, where we made a mess — er, I mean, pulled out all the craft materials we thought might come in handy. Green construction paper, green pom-poms, green ribbon, a green paper plate... .
We dove in. She wanted to make a ladder to get to the top of the box, a small hole for the leprechaun to jump into, and a full party’s worth of fun decorations inside, including miniature balloons and a doily rug.
“But you have to decorate the outside too,” I pointed out. “It has to look good enough for him to attract his attention and want to go inside.”
Her dad suggested spray painting the whole box gold, and I taught her how to fold bouncy springs out of paper as stems for three-leaf clovers.
But as we worked, I was torn on how much We The Adults were supposed to help. The assignment page clearly said it was a “family project” — but it was for a first-grade class. We weren’t aiming for anything Pinterest-worthy — but at the same time, we couldn’t just let her drive this train without any guidance.
I hoped we were hitting the balance properly.
But I’m not sure we were. After a while, she started getting annoyed with the project.
Maybe we’d been working on it too long without a break; I honestly don’t remember how long we were down there — 30 minutes? 45? — but we probably should have been keeping track.
Maybe we’d been overbearing, offering too much instruction instead of letting her do it her way.
Maybe it was merely the fact that it was homework, and homework is never really the most fun thing in the world.
But whatever the reason, she got frustrated. It started as reluctance to fix a spelling mistake she’d made on a paper sign, then grew into huffing and eye-rolling, and ended with me asking to see the new sign she’d made, and she threw it instead of handing it to me.
The throwing was what tipped the scale for me. It was only paper, and the throw wasn’t intended to hurt me — but it was still not OK.
She went to her room, and my husband and I evaluated the situation.
Throwing things, getting an attitude with people who are trying to help her, these things are not all right.
But getting frustrated? We couldn’t be mad at her for that.
I’d seen an article recently that addressed the falseness of trying to be positive all the time. I’m not sure how fully I agree with it — because I do think that a good portion of your quality of life depends on the attitude you choose — but it did point out that negative emotions are just as real as positive ones. And that I agree with. Squashing them down and pretending they don’t exist is simply not being realistic.
We can’t yell at children for feeling anything other than happy and smiling all the time; they need to know that bad feelings are natural, too — and that they’re not wrong for feeling them. It’s just how they handle the bad feelings that can be adjusted.
When we went to retrieve her from her room, my husband did the talking.
“Sometimes we have to do things that aren’t fun,” he said, “and sometimes, homework is one of those things. But you still have to give it your best effort, even if it isn’t your favorite thing to do. It’s OK to be frustrated. But you can’t take it out on other people, all right?”
We talked for a while, checking to make sure she understood.
It seemed like she did.
When we went back downstairs later that afternoon, we worked together to get that leprechaun trap finished. No more tantrums — or paper signs — were thrown. And the green and gold masterpiece that emerged would make any leprechaun curious.
Not a bad lesson for the day.
And not a bad destiny for that Amazon box, either.
Email Emely Varosky at evarosky@heraldnews.com.