Karma.

Jesse wrote about Karma the other day and it got me thinking about my girls. On Christmas morning, they looked in their stockings and each found a necklace (identical to each other’s). The necklace was something Santa picked up at Target – it is a sliver, circular shape with the words: “what goes around comes around” swirling into the center. The card on which each was hung at the store had the word KARMA, artfully scripted across the top.

Immediately, Josey needed to know what the word meant. I examined the necklace (theatrically feigning ignorance of Santa’s identity) and read the back of it. Josey’s face lit up… “Ohhh… so like when McKenna’s mean to me, something bad will happen to her.” Ummm… something like that. McKenna rolled her eyes and said, “Josey, you’re stupid.” Then McKenna bit her lip while she was eating her breakfast casserole. Seriously. I was uncharacteristically silent to try not to tarnish my Mother of the Year trophy.

Not long after Christmas, I was in my office, putting up a few quotations I had collected (my office is covered in cartoons, quotations, and pictures of lots of different things…) I ran across one that says, “How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours” (attributed to Wayne Dyer). Isn’t that the hardest thing to get across to young people? Life isn’t fair and we don’t always get what we think we deserve, but certainly, if you put your best foot forward, and treat other people with dignity and respect, you will have a much better chance at life feeling fair.

I listened to a speaker today who talked about the teenage brain. She talked about how immature it is and the fact that the brain really develops from the back to the front…the back of the brain is what controls the reflex parts (breathing, etc.), and the front of the brain controls the reasoning and long-term decision-making ability. This is why Karma doesn’t make sense to teens. Understanding (or believing in) Karma requires the ability to see down the road. In order to see down the road, you need to be a teen with a VERY mature brain –OR- an adult.

It’s always interesting to me to meet and work with those rare, mature kids who don’t act like teens. It’s interesting because I “know” how kids will act, and then a few come in and surprise me. I suspect Josey would surprise me if I didn’t know her and she walked through my door today.