“But it’s not fair!”

How many parents have heard this cry?  Let’s be honest, how many of us have made this cry?  Many of us were raised with the notion that everything was supposed to be fair. And, it seems right.  After all, everyone is valuable.  Why should someone be treated better than everyone else?  Fairness seems to be what compassionate people should aspire to.  There is only one problem with it.  Life isn’t fair.  It never has been and it never will be.  I am not pointing this out in a cynical “just-grow-up-and-face-cold-hard-reality” type of way, either.  As nice as “fairness” might seem, life was never designed to have this as a standard.  For good reason, too.

Let me explain, there are two choices.  Life can be “fair”, or it can be good.  (Sometimes it can be both, but not very often.)  Trying to give everyone equal access to everything and no special treatment is the foundation of communist style societies.  And, politics aside, this isn’t the kind of household I want.  Why? Because in this type of home, no one is able to truly flourish.

Jamey and I have six kids.  Each one is spectacular beyond words.  And, while they have definite similarities (all “made by the same recipe”, if you will) they are each distinctly themselves, too.  They have different interests, different talents.  They have different personalities.  They are all very unique individuals. So, wouldn’t we be doing them a disservice to treat them as if they were the same?  If we treated them all “equally” we wouldn’t be treating any one of them according to what is best for them, personally.

My desire isn’t for my kids to have a level playing field. It is for each of them to have the field that best helps them to succeed.  I want to set each one of them up for success the best that I am able.  So, I am going to deal with them according to their individual strengths and weaknesses.  I am going to take individual gifts and talents into account when decisions are made.

Is this always the popular way to do things?  No.  On occasion those words “It’s not fair!” have been known to cross the lips of one of my children.  And, in those moments I always say the same thing, “You’re right.  It isn’t fair.  Do you want me to be fair, or do you want me to be good?”  And, as they grow older, they also begin to see that it usually can’t be both.  Life in our house isn’t fair.  But it is very, very good.