“Shut your pie hole!” I heard my daughter, Nina shouting playfully at my son. She didn’t like how Tyler was apparently laughing after accidentally pushing Aidan onto his Gameboy, which cracked in such a way as to reveal the delicate innards of an electronic toy that was long overdue for retirement.

The Gameboy has been their go-to gadget ever since they found the dinosaur contraption in the garage at the beginning of summer.

Pokemon has been revived once again.

I had to inwardly chuckle at my Nina Noo. Leave it to her to speak her mind. She’s like a younger version of her mother, only with more gusto.

Or is she…..

I stared sadly at the Gameboy which floundered like a fish out of water…a shell of its former self now, and Aidan was reduced to tears.

Then, the million questions start.

No, I explained, I don’t know anyone who can fix plastic stuff, and no, I don’t know anyone who can sew it back together.

Where’s their resourcefulness! I suddenly wondered why the little kids didn’t automatically jump at the idea to fix a gadget. I certainly fixed things all the time when I was their age.

It reminded me of the time when I was 11 and I found a cassette tape on the sidewalk when I was out roaming the neighborhood alone. The cassette had a crack, but I didn’t ALLOW that small detail to squash my glee. I still somehow got it to work in the cassette player when I took it back home. I think it was a 2 Live Crew album (ha).

But anyway, the Gameboy still worked, but the kids just didn’t know what to do with its floppiness. Sure, I could have fixed it, but where’s the fun in that?!

So they’re without a game console for now, because they weren’t resourceful enough to put it back together on their own. I MIGHT explain it to them one day…I might even bring home an old radio for them to take apart, but to think that toy-playing is over because the toy is cracked is unacceptable.

These lifeforms I’m raising are obviously living in a different world. Who do they think is going to fix it? It’s not going to be me…it’s ok to fix things, it’s ok to figure it out on your own, and not ask a million questions. Learn by doing. It worked just fine for me when I was their age.

Here’s another case in point: because of the recent Fresno heat, I took the entire troop to Fashion Fair on Saturday, thinking it would be a cool and relaxing outing with the fam bam. No such luck was had.

No sooner do we get there, but the questions start: Mom, look at _______. Mom, can we ________? Mom _______?

I don’t know about you all, but I just didn’t ask my mom and dad a million questions when I was their age – I just figured it out on my own. I don’t know what makes my kids think I’m the end all be all to every childhood question imaginable, but I definitely feel that I now have gathered enough kiddie questions to write a small how-to book.

Is this a generational thing?

One of the trippiest questions I had came from Nina. She wanted SPECIFICALLY to go to some store…it had to do with bracelets and jewelry and stuff, and THEN she wanted to go to Claire’s….which also has jewelry and bracelets and stuff. But before that, she wanted to look at some sort of twinkle toed shoe thing, blah, blah, blah.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I am shopper-challenged. For example, I’ve spent the last few years looking for a good purse and still haven’t found one. I’ve been known to just carry around a wallet. I also don’t know how people shop til they drop like they do. I just need to get in, and get out, and get on with life.

So in a nutshell, these kids with all their questions were driving me a bit batty. The only reason why they even knew about these shops in the first place was not because of me, it was because they went shopping with a family friend a couple weeks ago who just happened to like to shop. And now they expect me to be the same way.

Ha.

By the time we got to the Disney store, I was done with the questions. Teddy Bear stuffing store? Not! Pretzel place? Not! I didn’t care if they had a million dollars worth of birthday money that was burning a hole in their pocket. There were too many questions about how they were going to spend their money casually just because they could. Sure, I could have ALLOWED it, but it just went against every notion of morals within me. And did I mention there were too many questions?

They just have to realize they live in a consumer-driven world, but are blessed with an anti-consumer-driven mama. Sure, I like to LOOK at things at the stores in the mall….but that surely does not mean I’m necessarily going to buy anything. They really need to get that.

I also told them they were not going to be buying anything at the mall that day because their questions had taken all the fun out of meandering about the mall, and that if I was ever going to take them back again, they needed to check the high amount of question-making at the door.

We left the mall, and went to GW School Supply. I actually needed to buy something that was school related. The kids tagged along and I told them they were allowed only ONE question while we were there. We ended up finding the cheap toy section, and THIS time, when they asked if they could get a toy, they prefaced it by telling me the price first.

Needless to say a $2.00 toy was a lot easier to agree to, and they walked out the door with something new to look at, lose, or break. Yay.

Of course I used this whole experience as a teaching moment for them, by explaining how much cooler it is to walk out of a store with most of your money in tact, as opposed to blowing it all in one moment of weakness…in addition to the question thing.

Some people learn better by doing, and others learn by questioning, and maybe that’s where I am with them. Either way, the questions have to be focused and direct, and should be kept to a minimum, and not just shot out at will. I hope they realize that eventually. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.