Jen Singer
The mother of one six-month-old baby, Susan has yet to learn that it's a bit of both.
At first, I chalked up our successful dinner at my cousin's house to age. My boys aren't the toddlers they once were, back when my husband, Pete, and I would take turns shoveling our food down our throats while the other one chased the boys up and down the wheelchair ramp outside the restaurant.
Now that they're tweens, they actually remain seated during meals and participate in the conversation. Admittedly, that conversation sometimes involves one kid shouting, "Quit it!" and the other one replying, " You quit it!"
But they behave more often than not, and that, I thought, was more luck than skill - until I witnessed the very public, very disconcerting dressing down of a mother by her 11-year-old daughter.
At a recent backyard gathering, this tween wanted her swimsuit and she wanted it RIGHT NOW. Not after her mother was done eating. Not after Mom completed her conversation with other adults. NOW.
"Can't I finish eating?" the mother asked meekly, as though she was a housekeeper and her daughter was super model Naomi Campbell with cell phone poised over her head, ready to throw.
"No!" the child yelled. "I want to go swimming now ."
Everyone at the table watched, holding their breath, while the mother ate faster. Then her little cherub moved to the other side of the table and observed her for a second or two.
"Do you have to eat the sauce, too?" she bellowed.
Did her mother take her aside and chastise her? Did she tell her she can't go swimming? Did she take away the hot pink cell phone she'd been texting on? No. She got up and retrieved her daughter's swimsuit from the car, and then she sat back down at the table, where another mother started talking about how obnoxious kids get when they get older.
"You'll see," a mother of a teenage boy warned me. She told me how her college age son had charged plane tickets to her credit card and disappeared for two weeks. "The only way I knew he was alive was from the bank withdrawals and credit card charges."
"I'll bet if you cut off the cash, you'd find him at your door very quickly," I offered. But she shrugged while the 11-year-old did cannonballs off the diving board.
Maybe I'm lucky that my boys don't behave like this. Or maybe, I'm more skilled at parenting than I give myself credit for. Either way, I'm as happy as Benny. Well, pretty close.
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