A slap in the face

Wife slapped Son 1 in the face today. I don't know what was going on, exactly, because I was at work. Her version is that she had tried and tried and tried to get him to do something simple, and he blew it off completely; his version is that he was making some sarcastic remark to his little brother and Wife thought it was aimed at her.

There is this dynamic that has been building between Wife and Son 1 for some time now, that I have not had time to write about. But a lot of it revolves around her telling him to do things and him not doing them. Wife takes this personally -- as direct, intentional disrespect or contempt. I think there are a lot of other explanations -- among them, that Son 1 is almost a teenager and hardly ever hears anything anybody tells him any more. I also think that Wife's techniques for getting other people to do things may not be calibrated very well to young boys. In any event, I find I have a lot less trouble than Wife does in getting cooperation -- though there are days that I fail too. The fact that I get at any rate more cooperation than she does is part of what makes Wife think I must somehow be undermining her with the boys.

Anyway, I thought the slap in the face was significant. The last time I ever did that to one of the boys -- easily five years ago by now -- Wife damned near served me with papers on the spot. And I made certain never to do it again. I don't know for sure what is going on in this part of her head these days, but I hope we are seeing an isolated incident and not a trend.

The dynamic with Son 1, however, is definitely a trend. Some time soon, I should write more about that. But maybe not tonight.