I created a fantasy game for us parents in honor of the NBA Trade Deadline and here’s how it works. For the sake of the column, rather than being a General Manager of an NBA Team, you’re a parent in your household, and rather than trading players as your assets, you’re trading your kids annoying habits (not your actual kids, c’mon)…
In other words, just like when an NBA General Manager is evaluating a trade, he has to look at the value of what he’s receiving compared to what he’s giving up in the short term vs. the long term.
Most NBA teams have nearly every player ranked in a database according to Tiers. The top guys like LeBron or Steph Curry are considered untouchable and would likely never, ever be traded, unless they said they were going to leave after their contracts, in which case, the GM would have to try to recoup the value of losing such an irreplaceable asset. This is what is happening with the New Orleans Pelicans right now and Anthony Davis.
Same goes for this fun little game.
In this hypothetical scenario, you can trade away one of your kids annoying habits for a certain amount of time (ahhh peace), but you have to take back a higher volume of, or even several, lesser habits (there’s the rub).
Since our kids habits don’t have contracts, I ranked the Top 17 most annoying habits by Tiers and assigned a time frame to them, like this:
TIER ONE (One Week)
#1 Saying ‘no’ to ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING
#2 Stalling for 20 minutes to do ANYTHING
#3 Hitting/pinching/scratching a sibling
#4 Constant whining
TIER TWO (Two Weeks)
#5 Instant crying when something goes wrong
#6 Far too regular tantrums & meltdowns
#7 Getting up insanely early on the weekends
TIER THREE (Three Weeks)
#8 Refusing to get out of bed during the week
#9 Hating / Loving the same foods over and over
#10 Fighting bedtime EVERY night
#11 Exploding when you take a device away (iPad, kids Kindle)
TIER FOUR (Four Weeks)
#12 Always forgetting to put dishes away
#13 Always forgetting to clean up
#14 Leaving toys everywhere
#15 Never washing their hands after the bathroom
#16 Never flushing the toilet
#17 Leaving EVERY light on
What that means is, if we assign a value of ONE WEEK to Tier One and TWO WEEKS to Tier Two and FOUR WEEKS to Tier Three, would you trade one week of not having to deal with a Tier One habit for four guaranteed weeks of having to deal with a Tier Four Habit?
For instance:
Would you trade ONE WEEK of never hearing the word ‘NO’ from your kids – meaning, they say, “Yes, dad, I’ll do it now” whenever you ask them to do anything – for FOUR WEEKS where you know they will absolutely leave every light on in the house?
OR would you trade away ONE WEEK of ZERO hitting/scratching/punching between siblings (soooo nice) for a guaranteed TWO WEEKS of your kids crying every time something goes wrong (ehhhh).
You know your kids, so these rules aren’t hard and fast… I’m aware kids only do these things some times and kids aren’t robots.
However, what would your serenity be worth to you to know that you would not hear the sound of your kid whining for TWO WEEKS (bliss!!!) but the tradeoff is you know your kid is likely to not flush a toilet for TWO MONTHS?
What is your breaking point?
What would you trade???
Have fun and hit me on TWITTER HERE to discuss.
