Kids are kind of funny when they get upset. Malcolm knows that when he gets upset, he should scream something really mean at me at the top of his lungs. The problem is, he doesn’t really know what to scream. It’s like he screams the first thing that comes to his mind. I guess he learned this from us; one time, at the end of a long day when Malcolm was doing something particularly bad (I can’t remember what it was, so I will make up something obscure for the purposes of telling the story,) Amy yelled, “Malcolm, if you don’t put down that bag of kitten feet, you will never get anything you want!!! (Ever!)”
The other day, Malcolm got upset with one of his friends and yelled at her that she wasn’t invited to his birthday party. She didn’t miss a beat and told him that she would never go to his house to play AND that he wasn’t invited to her birthday party. At this point, Malcolm utilized what I am sure he considered to be the nuclear option and told the little girl that she was not going to come over for a sleepover, a threat so outrageous that she broke down in tears ran to her mom. Malcolm has also threatened to throw me in jail, tell mommy on me, and even [gasp] not share popcorn with me on movie night. It is hard to stay mad at someone who screams about popcorn and movie night at the height of their tempter tantrum.
Hanging around kids as much I do and being acutely interested their misbehavior, I have seen kids drop some doozies on the parents. My favorite is easily when I heard a little boy tell his grandmother that he was going to cut off all her hair while she slept. Parents are used to bizarre and ugly things coming out of their kids’ mouths, but grandparents have long since forgotten about such outbursts. I thought of a million things I wanted to yell at that kid, but the old woman thought about it for a second and replied, “if you did that I would be bald and sad. Now, can we leave the sandbox?” Bald and sad indeed. Aren’t we all.
Tags: parenting
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