It’s so easy to follow in our parents’ footsteps and discipline the way they did. I was happy that I remembered a different way to deal with a situation that made everyone somewhat happy. At times, compromise is an excellent technique, and yet as parents, we often feel like we have to stick to some invisible rules. Obviously, some rules should not be broken and, therefore, have to be dealt with more rigorously by taking something away: dessert, allowance, cell or T.V. But at least being able to compromise at times, your kids won’t feel like you’re total control freaks.
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| Nicole always loved learning new things. |
A funny family story teaching us this simple lesson:
Everyone had finished eating dinner except Nicole, our three-year-old. She had already gobbled down her chicken, but ten minutes had passed, and still, she sat at the table pushing her Spanish rice and peas around with her fork. I guess she thought if she did this long enough, a black hole would magically appear on her plate, and the despised food would be sucked down.
"Mommy, peez hep me eat deez peas," she whined.
But this time, I said, “No, Nicole, the peas aren’t going to kill you. I only put a few on your plate this time. Come on, eat them,” Alan repeated the command. Her upper lip pouched out. I kissed the top of her head and followed Alan upstairs with the rest of the clean, folded clothes. Stopping by Kyle's bedroom, I poked my head in and found him playing some creative tune on his little electric piano that he bought at a garage sale. “Sounds good,” I said. His face lit up.
We returned to the kitchen, and Alan started packing the dishwasher, and I placed the wet clothes into the dryer when I heard Alan ask, “Nicole, did you throw your food down the disposal?”
“No,” she answered matter-of-factly.
I poked my head out of the doorway when Alan beckoned with his head for me to look in the sink. Morsels of reddish rice were stuck onto the sides, looking like red ants trying to escape from the treacherous dark hole, the drain. And a few brightly colored green peas balanced on the rim of the garbage disposal precariously. The whole picture reminded me of a billiard table. Even though Nicole was tall for a three-year-old, she still wasn’t tall enough to see that all her food hadn’t made it down the drain.
A heartbeat later, tears welled up in her eyes, “I cannot towl a lie. You know that chairwee stowee?” Her ‘R’s still sounded like ‘W’s, a speech problem that ran on my side of the family.
“No,” Alan and I responded almost in unison, looking at each other, knowing full well the story but confused about how it related to this situation.
Her eyes were glued to the ground, and her eyebrows knitted together. She looked like she had committed a felony, and the fluorescent lights beaming down from the ceiling made me feel like we were standing in a courtroom.
She continued in her cute speech impediment. “You know when George Washington cut down the cherry tree, and his father asked if he did it? First, he said no, and then he told the truth.” She paused and then shook her head slowly. “I cannot tell a lie.” This elongated sigh escaped from those innocent lips. “I did it.” Nicole sounded as if she had just admitted to murdering someone.
Giggles started bubbling up from my throat, but I kept swallowing them down, trying to keep them under control while she told the first part of the story. The urge to bend down and hug her was overwhelming. I wanted to soothe her and tell her it was okay, but I knew I shouldn’t. Hard to see due to his red mustache covering his mouth; Alan was also trying not to laugh.
We listened intently without saying a word up to the confession part, and then we looked at each other. We didn’t know what to do or say. Again, the urge to laugh was overwhelming, I sucked in my lips to keep some semblance of control, and Alan’s mustache kept twitching as he, too, struggled not to laugh. But still, a giggle was trying to sneak out, and I had to slam a hand over my mouth before it could escape. Alan couldn’t contain his laughter any longer. A few chuckles squeaked out, so he grabbed the sponge and walked away to clean the stove. Not only was it how she expressed her last two sentences, but I think it was her anguished face that really got to us.
When Alan glanced at me, I gave him a minuscule nod that told him it was his turn to discuss what she had done wrong with his daughter, but he shook his head and nodded for me to do it. I sighed in disappointment. I always seemed to be the bad guy. It wasn't fair. He had such a hard time disciplining her, not that she did much wrong, mind you. Nicole was Daddy’s little girl, and he didn’t want to be the bad guy.
I picked up her plate and put one dollop of peas and rice on it, and then I bent down to her level and said, “Nicole, we love you very much, but you know better than that. We don’t throw food away; that’s wasting it.” I set the food down on the table, and she followed me. “You need to take these two bites, then get ready for bed.” I calmly explained. I poured her some more milk so that she could wash it down.
“Pick two books, and we’ll be up there to read to you after Mama brushes you guys' teeth,” Alan said. Without any argument, but with a, I hate this discipline thing on his face. I watched her push the rice onto her fork with her hand and swallow without chewing, followed by a gulp of milk. Soon the peas followed, but she gagged as if about to throw up.
“Nicole,” I said. “Don’t think about it. Swallow.” She did, and Alan and I thanked her for being a big girl.
Once she walked out of the room, we had a good laugh. “I think God blessed us with Nikki. She makes us lighten up.” I chortled.
“We have one demanding child and one easy one,” Alan said. I nodded in agreement.
“I wanna know how come I’m the villain?” I demanded.
“What do you mean?” he asked innocently.
“You’re the one who found the food in the sink; you should have been the one who talked to her.”
“I just couldn’t do it. Her story….her look….”Alan stuttered.
“I don’t always want to be the bad guy. You need to work on that. You’re hard on your son but easy on your daughter. Not fair.” I replied.
He kissed me and said, "Okay, I'll try."
"Is hating a certain kind of food hereditary?"
Alan looked at me strangely. "What do you mean?"
"Well, James would scoot his peas around for about an hour, and when my dad wasn't looking, my mom would scoop them up and dump them in the trash, or she'd sneak a couple bites."
"That's right, I forgot about that. No, I don't see how disliking peas can be hereditary." I shrugged as I walked upstairs to be the Tooth Police, and Alan walked into his home office to shut it down.
A week later, I remembered something my little brother, James, had shared with me. He allowed his daughter, Erin, to choose one food item she hated so much that she never had to eat it again. She, of course, chose peas. That was an excellent compromise, something our parents would never have considered doing in the ’50s. So when I arrived home from work, I shared with Alan what I thought about doing, and he said it was a super idea. Once we were at the dinner table, I made the family announcement. I narrated what Uncle James had done with Erin and said, "I think it was a great idea. If we choose something, we don't have to eat again unless we want to. Now, what would that be, I wonder, Nicole?"
Nicole instantly yelled in a shrill, loud voice, “Peas!” popping up off the chair with such exuberance that she almost fell off her chair.
Kyle’s eyes bulged. The males looked at each other and replied as if rehearsed, “Mushrooms!” Kyle yelled in a high shrill voice. The four of us laughed like hyenas.
Alan agreed with Kyle, as he hated mushrooms also. I reminded Alan that Kyle didn't hate mushrooms until he had thrown a couple of them onto my plate of spaghetti while he voiced how much he detested them. Kyle and Alan denied the allegation, and again we broke out in laughter.
Finally, the gaiety died down. A last pile of spaghetti was calling out to be eaten, but I struggled to get it on my fork, so I grabbed a piece of garlic bread, and suddenly I felt I was being stared at. I looked up, and six eyeballs were staring at me. No one spoke, waiting for my response. I felt like I had just been caught stealing something.
Kyle finally broke the silence. "Mom, what food do you hate?"
But I couldn’t think of one single kind of food that I detested. “Guys, stop it. You’re making me feel uncomfortable.” Still, everyone stared at me, not saying a word.
“Well….” Alan broke the silence.
“I don’t know. I like everything.” Then an image popped into my head. “Hot-dogs! I really can’t stand hot dogs!” The three laughed at me as if I was insane.
“But that’s an American food,” Alan said. “How can you hate that?”
“Yeah,” Nicole and Kyle chimed in and yelled. “We love hot dogs!”
“I think it’s because one time my family and I went camping in Colorado where I ate so many charcoal-burned hot dogs that I had cooked over the campfire. My thirteen-year-old stomach was agitated. I had never felt that sick in my life. I spent more time out of the tent than in my sleeping bag because I was in the woods, vomiting all night. I was sure I was going to puke my guts out.” My poor mom, she didn't get much sleep either.
“Tina, you’re not supposed to talk about gross stuff at the table, remember?” Alan reminded me.
“Oops, forgot.” I stabbed a tomato.
"Then and there, I swore I would never eat another hotdog. But I'm sure I had to because my family made us eat what was on our plates. But once I left home, hardly ever."
Nicole reached across the table and patted my hand a couple of times, and said, “It’s okay.” The three of us cracked up because, again, she sounded like a mother.
Disciplining your child has to be consistent. However, spanking them is archaic. Time out, setting up a calendar for good behavior, which equals incentives, or discussing alternative behaviors makes your child think. Yes, we are human and will slip into reaction mode, and if that happens, always apologize and explain how you should have handled the situation. If you still have problems with a child, you should get therapy for that child and possibly the whole family.
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| Sometimes Nicole would give me this motherly look as if I did or said something wrong. |
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