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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #3 (January 15, 2008), page 7.
Why kids need no
When we were little (I don’t mean short, like your standard 5-feet 6-inch Asian guy; I don’t mean small, like those S-size shirts and sweaters we shop, hanging from Nordstrom Rack), the answer was no. The answer was always no. No matter what a kid’s request. No.
"Moma may I have that Matchbox car?"
"No."
"Auntie, may I play at Beni’s?"
"No."
No was normal. No was the standard. No and the no-giver were the barriers between what a bright boy or brave girl wanted and our big-big world.
To an urban American, this sounds harsh. Even cruel. Clearly undemocratic.
But ogh (Korean ogh, a perfect expression) how I wish someone, anyone, would shout a sharp NO at those rowdy little rats running around Starbucks every damp, dismal workday morning — pulling goodies off shelves, nipping between our crowd’s legs at the cream and sugar counter. Scalding coffee could hurt them.
Outside I wish someone, anyone, would take command with a clear NO of those squirrelly boys dashing dangerously near Broadway’s dark curb. A rain-blind car, a sleepy driver, could end it all in a tragic instant.
No. Just no.
No is so hard, in America. No happens not enough. Who knows what will become of these no-less kids.
Now, not knowing no has made it into Asian America. Ouch.
Recently, a niece informed our mother, "Oma, we don’t say no (to our son, your grandnephew), we redirect his attention."
"Hah?" Oma said, not knowing what else to say.
"Redirect attention?" I said, not knowing how to interpret — it was not a translation problem, the matriarch of our four-generation family speaks doggone good English. No, this was a uniquely American problem.
It was all set out, The No More No Theory, in a modern parenting magazine atop their Sanyo. No, that pediatrician wrote, can negatively impact a child’s developing sense of emotional security and personal efficacy. It’s better to distract the child from the wanted thing and to offer other choices. Yuck.
In short: good moms and grandmas are supposed to reassure our entitled brat that he’s loved a lot, and reinforce the notion that our big beneficent world belongs to him. Then you kindly add: "do you want a Nestle Crunch instead?" Double yuck.
Did you ever notice these no-less kids have no problem with yelling back "NO?"
No is okay
Slick parenting mags and smart-aleck peds aside, there’s lots of reasons for keeping no in our contemporary American lexicon. In usage. Often. On the tips of our lips, as our ladies say. Here are two:
1. Our wobbly world
To most of our aching little planet, America is synonymous with excess. True or not, Arabs and Africans and Asians and Latin Americans believe we are overfed and self-centered. Even Canadians call us pigs.
Of course we can clobber them all. For sure, we can take anyone’s precious oil, no earthly army can resist us. And naturally, we’re entitled to what remains of everyone’s clean air because no Kyoto Accords bind us. Right?
Right.
Well, it’s all right so long as might makes right. It’ll remain right if we don’t mind an increasingly angry world, if we’re not moved by all those folks calling us wrong.
But better than beating others and taking their essentials, better than slapping up tall walls along our leaky borders, is learning to say no to ourselves.
No, I don’t need to trade my boring six-year-old Camry for a three-ton Sequoia. No amount of envy from other Asian families will make me feel any better about myself. And no, earth’s warming atmosphere and Iraq’s war-weary families need no more abuse.
Another no: there’s simply no savings in piling high a Costco cart with a dragon’s hoard of giant prawns, with 36-packs of Kit Kat Bars, with 18-roll bundles of Brawny. Our American middleclass anxieties will not go away — we’ll only get diabetic faster, while consuming more paper towels than ever. Bounty or Brawny, just like new freeways, just like money, love, and time, are always gobbled up by month’s end. Gone. No matter how much you get. Gone.
Only our waste and our consumer credit, only those corporations producing all this excess and all those convenient credit cards, know no limits. Now imagine those companies expanding sales in the emerging markets of Old Mother India and the energetic Middle Kingdom, China. There are about 1.1 billion Indians and 1.3 billion Chinese eager to eat, wear, and drive, what Yanks do. That’s roughly seven times the U.S. population.
This week, an average American will eat up and trash out about 11 times more than an average Chinese. Imagine if next week, every Chinese family fouls our sky, stinks our sea, and dumps their garbage, just like us. Imagine us saying no to them. Imagine the faces of those fellas stacking their store shelves and those moms filling their shopping carts.
The time for no is today. The place to begin is our house.
2. Our pretty babies
The second reason NO needs to be number one, is our next generation.
"Aduh Momaaah!" I whined once, only once (ogh, the thrashing that followed). "Why’s everything so hard in our house? It’s always no-no-no. My American friends’ moms don’t —." BAAM.
I didn’t get to finish my beef, but it was the end of discussion.
I blubbered real bad back then, but I know now that our moms and our grandmas made NO normal because they were making us tough. They were loving us right. They nurtured their babies not by giving in to what we wanted, but by denying our childish impulses. By delaying our gratification, they made us earn every inch. They made us disciplined. Determined.
Kids raised by conservative parents are happier about what they get. We care for our belongings as if they’re Kinabalu Dragon’s precious pearls.
I don’t have to tell you about my crazy cousin’s three-car garage, crowded with her no-less son’s stuff. No need to mention that boy’s double-door closet, packed with toys untouched since the day he got them.
The waste is, of course, worrisome. My stressed-out cousin’s maxed-out credit worries us more. And our over-fed, self-centered, nine-year-old family oinker worries us most. None of this can continue. Ask our delicate earth — listen to her groan on her axis for all our awful excesses.
* * *
Notas: Thanks to Donald Wardwell of the Portland-based Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy, for this column’s conceptual core. Authority for national consumption/pollution rates, for world population figures, are drawn from the work of Jared Diamond, UCLA professor of geography and of environmental health sciences, and 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner for his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Prof. Diamond’s "What’s Your Consumption Factor?" appeared in the January 2, 2008 issue of The New York Times, <www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/ opinion/02diamond.html>.