You Get What You Get

Not Particularly A Realistic Moral

So, the art is kind of cute and the idea of the story - as in, the moral it aims to teach - is a good one, but this book just doesn't come across well to me. It portrays a character who is in complete control of his emotional reactions to disappointment and actively chooses to throw a fit except when he's at school because it's against the rules. That's not how a majority of kids who have tantrums operate.

The reaction to disappointment comes from needing to learn healthy ways to cope with emotional overload and needing to learn how to compartmentalize and separate a minor issue from a major injustice. Telling a kid to just accept that you “get what you get” and “be happy” with it isn't healthy or fair at all. It's a cynical and jaded world view, and ignoring the child's right to have their own opinions. Disappointment is a natural, normal human emotion which should not be bottled up; children (and many adults) just need to learn how to cope with it and move on from it. Yes, that does mean not having a tantrum. No, it does not mean forcing oneself to fake contentment and never even voicing a simple “aw, man, I wanted something different instead.”

Besides, if you have a child who gets so upset at getting the wrong design on a backpack that he stomps it on the ground and screams - an example from this book - they're not going to have the ability to handle getting the wrong supplies for a school art project simply because the teacher forbids tantrums. Portraying tantrums as solely a choice that can be made - and one a child is eager to make at every opportunity - is unfair to children with mental disabilities, emotional processing issues, mental health problems, or even just very sensitive souls.

Maybe I'm biased because I was such a child who didn't know how to handle disappointment and couldn't control her “fit throwing” until after I was taught healthier means of expressing those emotions. Considering I resent how many people would accuse me of doing it intentionally, I'm sure I do have a bias. I just kind of expected a book which showed a character learning to actually cope with the way life isn't always fair and accept that he can't always get what he wants.