Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Send "Em to Bed Without Dinner

Geez. I like to put halfway decent dinners on the table, but I don't suffer anxiety attacks over it, and my child has never had a tantrum over the menu. Seriously? A tantrum? The Boston Globe published it, it must be true.

This is what I have been getting at with respect to the "mommy" crap being published. This cannot be common enough to warrant a feature, and a follow up article with "advice." Hey, I have some advice-tell them they can eat it, or go hungry. I'm trying to imagine my mother's reaction to her children having tantrums over the meal being served, or accommodating us each with different dishes. I'm sorry, I can't imagine it, because it is so damned far outside of reality I'd need to be on drugs to get close to that level of imagination. My sister really hated sardines and crackers for lunch, but she ate them without complaint.I wasn't too thrilled with skinless chicken stewed in V-8 juice with watery courgettes, but I ate them without complaint.Maybe something happened since the 60's to change the dinnertime dynamics...wait scratch that, I know what happened since the 60's to change things-the 70's, 80's 90's and well-here we are in happy tantrum land.

So do these little boors put on the same display of manners when they dine at the home of their little friends? If you feel free to insult your mother's cooking, do they somehow manage to down the offensive food away from their family kitchen? I'm no parenting expert, (you probably figured that out by now, eh?) but I have to wonder if these children have figured out a swell way to manipulate their mothers. For fuck's sake-the guilt is supposed to be directed from mother to child, not the reverse. That's parenting 101.

A tantrum. Seriously.

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