“The food you buy is crap.” — Noah on this less-than-idyllic Sunday afternoon
Oy.
The lastest pre-teen battle started with a request to go to the mall this afternoon, catch a movie with friends, and hang out a bit. All without parents, he casually pitched, as if he was asking to go upstairs and read a book. Now, Noah is 12. OK, 12 1/2. And I’ll give him that some of his friends are allowed to do such. But he’s not. Every family has different rules is a mantra he’s heard enough times he finishes the sentence for us.
Fast forward to a full-scale fit involving tears, screams, declarations of I don’t want to be part of this family (from him, not me), and the lately predictable slams at the food I dare buy and prepare for him. Feeling his life is pretty damn good, Clyde and I tired of his complaining. That’s it, I told him. You want to see what a life of no fun is like, a life of no choices, you’ve got it. I sent him upstairs and fixed lunch. Grilled cheese and orange slices for him. And his life would consist of his room’s four walls until he could find a little more gratitude and respect.
Noah at lunch: I’m not going to eat it.
Me: Well then, you’ll sit there until you do. The next meal you have will be that grilled cheese sandwich and those orange slices.
Noah: Fine.
And there he sat. Until he later glared at me with daggers, crumbled up the sandwich, and threw it in the recycling bin. Clyde and I fished it out and put it back on his plate. We were going to the mat on this one.
My dad did this to me once. I remember the house we were in so I was under the age of 8. The food in question was a hot dog with ketchup on it. I sat there, with much self-righteous stubbornness, until I decided to feed it to the dog. Our German shepherd Alaska happily gulped it up. Dawn: 1. Dad: 0. Did you eat the hot dog? my dad asked. Yes, I told him. So why does the dog have ketchup on her nose? I was young enough that Daddy thought it was cute.
At 12, not so much. Lunch came and went, and we put the grilled cheese sandwich and orange slices in the refrigerator.
The tension eased, we had more rational discussions about how Noah didn’t seem very appreciative for what he has, and the day went on. At dinner, I had leftover arroz con pollo, Sawyer had leftover steak and roasted potatoes, Clyde ate peanuts on an airplane, and Noah sat at the table, explaining that he was never eating that sandwich. He wasn’t being confrontational anymore, just stating the facts as he saw them.
How many days will I have to go without eating before you give me something else to eat? he asked.
I considered the week ahead. Noah’s middle school requires students to have unpaid internships. He’ll work for 40 hours at a local frozen yogurt shop, starting tomorrow. I pictured him passing out or telling the owner that we hadn’t fed him since breakfast on Sunday. If he were going to be home or just going to school (where I could explain the sandwich standoff), that would be fine. But this internship complicated matters.
While I ruminated on this silently, Noah came up with a plan. What if he cooked the family dinner for the next week — or at least helped me cook. He grabbed his vegetarian recipe book. Oh, no, I told him. All the food is bought for the week. You’ll cook what I have planned, which will involve meat. Breakfast and dinner. And you’ll do the dishes.
Done. He jumped at the chance, tossing the grilled cheese and orange slices in the trash.
Seems a reasonable compromise. The problem is he isn’t appreciative — of much lately but especially of the food we give him. He prefers pesticides, he tell us, adding that Whole Foods has nothing he likes. I’m not caving there. He will not grow up on a diet of Kool-Aid, white bread and high-fructose corn syrup. I realize that developmentally, he’s just trying to separate from us. I’m hard-core on food (yes, I may have some control issues here), so he’s decided this is where he’s going to state his independence. I’m giving where I can (we do have white bread for his organic peanut butter & jelly sandwiches), but I feel it’s just good parenting to give him a healthy start in life and teach him about nutrition.
So over the next week, maybe he’ll realize that cooking and cleaning is a bit of a hassle. And we’ll spend time together doing something we both really do like to do.
Dawn: 1. Noah: 1. Grilled cheese: 0.
[...] than four?). And much of what is cooked will be prepared by Noah, who won the highly competitive Snarky Teenager of the Year Award on Sunday. His prize package includes being head chef for the family at breakfast and dinner, with [...]