The worst?

by Joan Herlong

What’s the worst thing your child could ever do?

The answer varies according to age, but we start out answering it in terms of the worst things we’ve already seen. When it comes to toddlers, parents often answer with tales of public tantrums, temporary disappearances, and Pollock-quality artwork using indelible markers.

It’s when kids get older, and the consequences of “the worst” can be life-altering, or even life-threatening, that the answers become mostly hypothetical. But sometimes, a parent’s answer to the question “the worst” can be loaded with unintended meaning.

When I was in college attending a family reunion, this topic somehow came up. A goofy bachelor uncle deigned to ask the question and then answer it, using me as a handy “Exhibit A.”

In his opinion, “the worst thing” a “grown child” like me, a college co-ed, could ever do would be to get knocked up. This was hastily followed by rounds of “God forbid” murmured among the assembled relatives.

Then my sainted mother pronounced that, “Of course this would never happen.” None of this surprised me a bit, including the fact that the entire discussion took place as if Exhibit A were not sitting right there.

What did surprise me was her follow-up to “That would never happen.” They would ship me off to the boonies. Idaho, to be exact. I would live with her sister who married a doctor. There I would gestate, away from the public eye, while we (as in “they”) planned out my future.

She had apparently been hoping for the best, while planning against “the worst.”

I know she meant well, but all that my 20-year-old ears could interpret was that if I ever found myself in any “worst” or similarly unthinkable situation, I was pretty much on my own. Telling my parents would be admitting that my decision-making ability up to that point was so patently flawed that I should forfeit any future decision-making capability and rot in Idaho.

Without meaning to say so, she was basically telling me, “I don’t want to know” if, God forbid, I ever made any bad or sad mistakes.

Luckily, I never had to test my interpretation. I’ve never been to Idaho, and I hope to have that noted in my epitaph.

But it stuck with me, and so I’ve made a point, at different points in their lives, of asking each of my children, at different times, ages, and stages, over the years, “What is the worst thing you could ever do?”

Sometimes they’ve reacted as if it were a trick question, or with great suspicion.

“What do you mean ‘the worst thing,’ Mom? I haven’t done anything wrong… lately.”

But I press on, reassuring that there’s no wrong answer, and I’m not on an entrapment expedition. I just want to know what they think would be the worst thing they could ever do, and more particularly, how do they think their dad and I would answer the question.

Murder is a popular answer.

“Killing someone, and not caring that I did it.”

Good answer. First degree murder devoid of remorse is hard to beat on “the worst” list.

At this point, the conversation I’m attempting to have often detours into eye rolling, heavy sighs, cuticle chewing, or frantic pantomimes to get the dogs to rescue them from my orbit.

But I patiently wait for serious answers.

“I dunno… crashing the car?”

No, that’s not even a runner-up.

At this point, the bizarre nature of the topic gets the best of them, so I have to answer a question in turn.

“I don’t know, Mom! Why do we have to talk about this in the first place? Be NORMAL.”

Which gives me a new tack to pursue.

Can they imagine any topic that I’m unwilling to talk about? Good, bad, gross, contagious or unthinkable?

No, in fact, they often wish there were.

And so, before I let them wriggle away, I give them my crib notes to the test, just in case they can’t read between the lines.

For us, the worst thing they could ever do is not trust me or their dad enough to tell us when they’re in trouble, or if they’ve made a bad or sad mistake. We won’t tell them what to do, and there are lots of things we can’t or won’t “fix” for them, but we’ll always do our best to help them figure things out.

There are too many kids, teens and young adults who “would rather die” than tell their parents something they’re convinced their parents don’t want to hear, or deal with. Then they compound the problem by trying to solve it, or ignore it, without help when they most need it.

You may have a different “worst case scenario” in mind, but there are worse things than posing probing questions your kids don’t want to answer. Even if your kids are like mine who really prefer not to talk about it now, they’ll be more likely to trust you down the road, if worse comes to worst.

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