Another morning of insanity today. Dumped cereal bowls, difficult questions, yet another attempt at discussing genetics, evolution, and where the first tree came from on the ride in (there are days I consider taking up religion for no other reason that the simplicity of saying "God did it"). No wonder I need another cup of coffee by the time I get here.
The choice event of the morning, however, was my lovely daughter complaining that her lunches never contain treats. Just so you don't think I'm torturing her, let me spell out the lunch I packed this morning. She has an ice water, yogurt, a banana, and a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich with no crust. For her snacks she has an applesauce cup, an all-fruit fruit peel, and Fig Newtons. So yeah, not exactly a cup of brussel sprouts and a crust of bread.
She was hoping for a treat, and I had considered it (I still have some candy canes to unload), but I thought that there was plenty of sugar already in today's offering. The thing is, she went all pouty on my, giving me the "your a bad father because I don't get candy for lunch" treatment. What do I expect - she's a first grader? It's not like she's honed her debate skills and has prepared a chart showing how her productivity will increase given an increase in snack cake offerings.
What bothered me though was my initial reaction. See, I vowed that this year I would work on not losing my patience with the kids. I tend to have a short fuse, and since the few childhood memories I actually have consist in large part of my mother yelling at me for...well pretty much anything, I really want that to not be me. So when I started to get angry, I tried to rope it in and come up with a logical explanation of why she should not complain.
I pointed out that I didn't get any of that stuff when I was a kid. (Probably true - I don't actually remember lunches before high school, and that was all Zebra Cakes and nachos. God I miss that.) When that failed to get any traction, I suggested that if I stopped packing snacks for a couple of weeks, then she might appreciate what she has, but she just took that as a threat (it wasn't). So we just talked it out, she calmed down, and we rushed through the rest of the morning, having not penciled in 'drama' for our morning routine.
What really bothered me about the whole scene was that my initial reaction was to work the "starving kids in Africa" angle, which immediately filled me with guilt. I mean, all I've got is a kid who's making a play for a piece of candy, and due to years of training, my first reaction is to invoke a group of horribly impoverished people who are genuinely suffering so I can end the conversation quicky. It's like we need a national swear jar, except instead of obscenities, we should all have to put in a dollar whenever we bring up these starving Africans, and then once a month we actually send the money to kids in Africa.
Solving world hunger through lazy parenting - another brilliant idea brought to you by the makers of Dangerously Low On Grog.
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