Do you like being blackmailed?

Another silly argument that started at the dinner table .... Honestly, if we all just gave up eating, we'd probably argue less. (joke)

Dinner is winding down. Son 1 starts making belching noises, on purpose. Wife scolds him to stop but he takes no notice. Not to be outdone, Son 2 lets out a long, noisy fart, making it obvious that he could have held it in had he wanted to. I send him away from the table for a few minutes, and when he comes back he is sulky. So sulky, in fact, that he decides he no longer wants the third helpings of dinner he had been asking for previously, but wants to get down from the table to finish his homework. (Damned good thing, too, because as it is the homework took him till quite late. And why did you wait this long to wrap up the assignment? Don't ask questions like that, Hosea ....)

Once he leaves the table, Wife picks up her usual refrain: "I don't want the boys to have to leave the table hungry."

Oh for heaven's sake. How many times have we gone over this? I steer her into the back room and then ask her point-blank, "Do you like being blackmailed?"

Wife: No, ... why?

Hosea: Because you are inviting it. Every time you refuse to send one of the boys away from the table for inappropriate behavior, all because you are so afraid that he might be a little hungry, you are pasting a sign on your back that says "Blackmail me!" And you are announcing to them that you won't and can't enforce any discipline whatever, because you won't and can't impose any consequences, because all they have to do is claim to be hungry and you cave in. And that means that you have given up being the adult.

Wife: Well I don't want them to be malnourished.

Hosea: Right, but they're not. Look at them -- they are the picture of health! Over the long haul of a week at a time, they aren't going to miss the food they need. And if they eat a little less this meal and a little more next meal, it's no big deal. They are fine. [And I ask readers to remember that Son 2, whose sulk started all this, had already had an entree, two vegetables, and second helpings on the entree. Honestly, malnutrition was not a risk for him tonight.]

Wife: But I don't want them to be hungry.

Hosea: Right, but as a result the boys know perfectly well that you will never enforce any rules at the table, and so they ignore you. You scolded Son 1 for deliberately belching -- did he stop?

Wife: No, he did it again.

Hosea: Right. He knows he doesn't have to mind you, because you won't enforce rules at the table. All they have to do is say "I'm hungry" and they can wrap you around their little fingers. But that means you have surrendered. You have given up being the adult. You have given up being in charge. And that means that when I am not around -- say, when I am travelling for work -- they are in charge. In practical terms, it means Son 1 is in charge, because he is the older. And he is eager for that. Look at him -- he wants to be in charge. And you don't. So you have given up being the adult. Is that what you want?

Wife: N-n-no-o-o-o ....

Hosea: But it is what you've got, by your lack of enforcement of any standards. I mean, which do you want more? Do you want to guarantee that they never experience even the slightest bit of hunger? Or do you want to be the adult? Because you can't do both. You have to choose.

Wife: Of course if you put it that way, then I want to be the adult.

Hosea: Fine, but that's not free. Then you have to stop obsessing over the risk that one of them might be the slightest bit hungry when he leaves the table.

Wife: But I don't want them to be hungry.

Hosea: You can't have it both ways. Choose.

Wife: Well right now I'm tired, so I choose to go to bed.

Hosea: Fine, you can go to bed. Just understand that this isn't one of those choices you can put off till later. One way or another, you will choose -- you do choose. If you don't make a point of choosing to be the parent, with all that entails, then you are inescapably choosing to let them be the parents when I'm not home ... or at least to let Son 1 be the parent. It is very much an Existentialist situation. You can't put it off to another day.

Haven't I said all this before? Probably. I forget what I have said to her, and what I have ranted inside the confines of my own skull. But she was pretty tired, and I bet she didn't understand it. She probably wouldn't have understood it even if wide awake. I don't know why not.