Peckish and Prickish

I failed as a parent last night.

I let my temper get the better of me, and instead of talking The Boy down to a reasonable place, I made the classic parental mistake of getting pissed and deliberately exacerbating an already unpleasant situation.

This my not actually be a “classic” parenting fail, but it was in our house when I was growing up, and I swore to myself I wouldn’t do the same thing in a similar situation. Yet there I was last night, eye-to-eye with my intractable 5-year-old, saying shit just to needle him, knowing it wasn’t doing anything at all to advance the resolution of The Great Ravioli Crisis of 2011.

And as a direct result of my failing to hold my shit more fully together, he went to bed without dinner for the first time in his life last night. After an exhausting 2+ hours of alternating tearful, grudgingly-reasonable and plain histrionic verbal sparring.

I know on paper I did the right thing—or so people have assured me—and I frankly don’t think he would have eaten the ravioli last night even if I had kept it 100% together. Every time he comes back from a trip to visit his Grandparents, he comes home peckish, and this time he’s been… peckish for longer than usual.

Earlier in the day, we had a 45-minute delay on the way to the pool because he would not stand still and allow sunblock to be applied—a skill he’s demonstrated mastery of as recently as a couple days ago—without writhing and screaming in imaginary pain.

Peckish. And I got irritated with him during The Sunblock Incident too, exacerbating it and contributing to the delay.

The way I see it, one of us needs to remain consistently reasonable. And as I am literally ten times older than he is, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the adult in the room ought to be me.

Anyhow, he was fine this morning. I’d been feeling like Joseph Mengele all night, but he didn’t bring it up and I was only too happy to let it slide until the next time. 

The Missus just came in and reassured me that I had done fine last night, then added, “…except maybe when you walked by his bedroom and yelled to me in the kitchen, ‘Yeah, some ice cream sounds GREAT!’”

Ugh. What a prick. I sure hope he sees me as a cautionary tale and not a role model; that’s what we have sports athletes for.