Our New Philosophy

During some lunch-break Christmas shopping today the following was observed:

A mild mormon mom was in the long check out line of a book store trying to keep her two small boys at bay. The older boy, maybe 5 years old, soon spotted the candy display. While the store patrons patiently waited to make their purchases, this tot verbally debated with himself the pros and cons of spending his entire $4 allowance on one large, luscious, chocolate Santa. With sprinkles. Fortunately for the boy the store was understaffed, the line slow moving, and he had plenty of time to think things over. Finally, after a lot of consideration and with determined decisiveness the little one turned to his mom and said
"You know, having chocolate is better than having money. I'm going to get it."

Smart kid. We're going to try to adopt that way of thinking in our home this Christmas Season. We hope you do the same.

Case Study 11-2007

Location: Denver, CO. The Burgoyne Family Thanksgiving of 2007.

Study Testers: Mike and Shaina Burgoyne

Study Participants (Age in years): Madelynne (4), Eli (3), Hannah (2), and Leah (1).

Objective: To observe and note particular behavioral or environmental aspects concerned in the rearing of children in preparation for the testers eventual personal experience of raising offspring, which will occur at an undisclosed future date.


Study Notes:
- Despite the frequency of wiping, a 1 year old's face will never be clean of food, snot and/or drool for more than a 3 second time frame.
- In order to avoid chaos it is vital for the parenting factors to know and remember details such as: the color of each child's sippy cup, asking about hand washing, and whose turn it is next.
- Allowing the elder subjects to skip the afternoon slumber period, even if they are quiet during it, may result subsequently in a tantrum period equal in length to the slumber period missed, but extremely more severe in decibel levels.
- Suggesting to the subjects that they may only pick on someone smaller than them will be taken seriously.(Tester Mike's idea). The result is a domino like visual experience as the biggest pushes the second biggest and so forth until all have fallen.
- Interaction with female subjects will most likely involve princesses and rainbow unicorns and everyone will live happily ever after.
- Interaction with boy subject will always involve violence and destruction and everything being killed. Even the magical snowman.*

Study Results**:
It is wise that the subjects only become more complicated as they grow older and the parenting factors have had more time to expand their understanding of the nature of the rearing process. The testers have decided to move forward with continued studies on these subjects until they are more sufficiently prepared to enter the process themselves.


Foot Notes:
* This observation was reaffirmed when the 9 year olds in church made Christmas ornaments. The girls made sure their ornaments had as much sparkle and glitter as they could. The boys made theirs into daggers.

** May it be noted that despite the cost of preparing for and executing this study (both tester vehicles experiencing repair needs immediately before departure), the testers have agreed that regardless of the study results, this was one of the best Thanksgivings either of them have experienced and would like to thank all involved for the wonderful time.