I hear it more times than I can count daily. And “that” can be anything, even things you’d never imagine. It usually starts small, like a larger dessert. Or an extra throw when we’re having a catch. Or even who gets to shower first. None of it is fair.
Sometimes the arguments are so unbelievably specific that it’s hard not to laugh. One child went in the house first twice in a row. One got a slightly longer turn picking what to watch on TV. One may have earned a later bedtime because he handled responsibility better that day. The other somehow received four more Goldfish. As if I wanted to be an arbiter of fairness or something.
The amazing thing I’m learning about my kids is their ability to detect unfairness. They can’t find their shoes, remember where they left their water bottle or notice the towel directly in front of them on the floor, but they can absolutely identify a discrepancy involving TV time from three rooms away.
“Why does he get more time than me?”
As a dad, it feels like I spend an unreasonable amount of time serving as commissioner of a tiny domestic sports league where everyone believes the officiating is biased against them. And the problem is, they’re not totally wrong. Fairness is complicated.
When they were younger, fairness was easier. Same number of crackers. Same bedtime. Same amount of time on the swing. Equal meant fair. But now they’re getting older, and older means different needs, personalities and situations.
Parenting is starting to become less about equal treatment and more about understanding what each child needs individually, which turns out to be much harder. And that’s where things seem to keep getting more uncomfortable. Because my kids want fairness to mean “the same.” But life almost never works that way.
It’s not just kids who struggle with fairness, adults do too. I know I’m not alone trying not to measure whether somebody got more, better or easier than I did. We just use quieter voices than our kids, usually. Half of parenting is explaining things to my kids that I’m still trying to understand myself.
So instead of going with the standard “life isn’t always fair” line, I’ve tried to stop and understand where they’re coming from because things don’t always feel fair. And feelings matter, even when the conclusion is off the mark. Instead of trying to convince them, I’ve started to simply say, “I understand.”
That’s something I’m slowly learning as a dad too: not every situation requires a lesson. Sometimes people, including kids, just want to know they’ve been heard.
Because most of the time, when the boys yell, “that’s not fair,” they’re not really arguing about dessert or TV time or who got to go first. They’re trying to figure out where they stand. They are wondering, “do I matter the same?” That part hits me every time.
So, I’m trying to answer that question better. Not by making every outcome exactly equal or turning our house into some impossible fairness calculator, but by making sure both know they’re seen, understood and loved. Even on days when one gets a slightly bigger cookie. Which, for the record, I now understand may actually be the greatest injustice my children think they can experience.
