When mom is perceived to be a Bully.....

“Mom, you are being such a bully”.

This is what my son screamed at me from the dinner table yesterday.  

At first I was pissed. How dare he accuse me of such a terrible thing when all I am trying to do it get him to EAT.  I replied “wanting you to eat new foods (in this case, mashed potatoes and pot roast) is NOT the behavior of a bully, it is me being a loving mom that wants you to grow big and strong!”.

He sat in that moment – eyes filled with tears and said “but you are yelling at me and Bully’s yell”!

OUCH. Yeah, so THAT stung.

We were already dealing with an under-medicated Jake (thanks USPS) and a PMS’ing mother. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that my timing of trying to get him to eat a new food totally sucked. What was I thinking?

I told him to take a deep breath and I would do the same.  After all, we were in this thing together even though neither of us wanted to be sitting at that table in front of the ridiculously small portion of now ice cold mashed potatoes and 1x2 inch of roast beef.

I stopped yelling and he stopped crying. I bargained with him (“eat ¼ of a forkful of mashies and ½ of a bite of the beef and then you can rent a movie on demand”) He countered with “I will eat the mashies but no meat”. This back and forth continued for 13 minutes.

I finally pulled out the big guns and said in as calm of a voice as my moody, tired, crampy and elevated blood pressure self could muster “if you don’t eat 1 bite of each you cannot go on the field trip Tuesday and you will lose your IPAD privilege”.

Now before you feel the need to email me and condemn me for making threats – JUST SHUT UP.

My day to day interactions with him are always about threats. It’s like our version of the tango. I threaten no less than 16 times a day to take away / throw away his toys, movies, technology and so on if he does not comply with my wishes of homework completion, cleaning up his mess, putting away his toys, brushing his teeth…..pretty much everything I ask him to do other than breathe is met with an argument (Ahhhh teenagers). ANYWAY….

I threatened him with the non-participation in the field trip and he must have thought about this for 5 more minutes (if you are keeping track we are now at the 37 minute mark of this spectacle). He then calmly grabbed his fork and said “I have a great idea, I can put the beef on the fork WITH the mashed potatoes then I won’t have to take 2 bites like you want me to, I can do it MY way”.

Sigh…..

Jake - 13 years old. Sitting in the lobby of a restaurant where there is nothing on the menu his majesty will try. 

"The sunrise is golden and lovely

The birds chirp and twitter and tweet,

You woke me and asked for some breakfast,

So why the f— won't you eat"?  

  

~ Adam Mansbach author and genius behind 'You Have to F—ing Eat'