the rice incident

Bad mama update

I spend a lot of time thinking about the many ways I am an imperfect mother.  But last night I really topped myself with a moment of horrible parenting.  Joey has a favorite thing he likes to do at the dinner table that frustrates the living shit out of me.  He likes to throw his food off the side of his tray.  He’ll be eating happily and then he will pick up a piece of meatball or a noodle covered in sauce and just fling it off the side and onto the floor.  He also cannot bear to have his milk cup on his tray for even a moment after he finishes drinking from it.  He will set it on the tray in front of himself, wind up and take a huge swing at it, sending it hurtling across the room.

I’ve been patient with him.  I’ve tried ending his meal when he starts tossing shit around but this only makes him stand at our feet, clawing and whining while we’re trying to finish our meal.  I’ve tried ignoring him but it’s hard to do that when pasta covered in tomato sauce is being flung around the room.  I’ve tried instructing him to put the food in his mouth and not on the floor and this works well if I’m not also trying to eat and I have the time to sit right in front of his face and watch his every bite.  The minute I look away the flinging continues.

This started when he was very young and he didn’t know what he was doing.  He was messy and stuff just ended up going off the side of his tray and he would watch it fall to the floor in amazement. But now he knows exactly what he’s doing.  Sometimes he will hold his food out to the side and then look at me and Eli almost as if he’s goading us to see what we’ll do.  Sometimes all it takes is a gentle reminder to put his food in his mouth and he does it and we all continue to eat.  Other times he has plans, and he waits until he has our full attention before he opens his hand and releases the food.  And after he drops the food, he smiles at us like, “What’re you gonna do, I’m a baby, now clean up my mess and DANCE FOR ME, PUPPETS!”

Last night I was tired and hungry and I didn’t want to deal with it.  We were eating jambalaya with chicken and rolls and it was so good I just wanted to sit there and eat and eat and eat and have some peace.  But then Joey started flinging rice and peaches around the room.  I tried to stay patient and do the right thing.  I instructed him to stop several times, but when he kept flinging and smiling and totally ignoring me, I decided to get his attention the easiest way I could think of in the moment.  I scooped a big handful of Cajun seasoned rice off my plate and threw it at him.  It hit him in the side of the face and stuck.  He looked shocked at first, like, what the fuck was that?  But then after a few seconds of us staring at each other in disbelief he broke out into a huge grin and started laughing.  Like rice in the face was the best thing to ever happen to him.  And his laughing made me laugh because I felt like I narrowly dodged some kind of emotionally scarring event. 

After we picked the rice off his face and washed him up for bed, Eli and I had a talk.  I thought he was going to rip into me about what I did to our baby.    Or at least point out that I am an evil monster of a person who shouldn’t be allowed to parent a child.  He surprised me, though.  He told me what I did was fucked up but he thought about doing the  same thing.  The difference between me and Eli is that he has impulse control and doesn’t automatically do every little thing that flash through his mind.

So I didn’t scar the kid or make him feel bad.  But I also didn’t teach him a very good lesson about how I expect him to behave at the dinner table.  And I have a terrible feeling that last night’s lesson is going to come back and bite me in the ass the next time we’re at Chili’s because I’m craving a big salad.  And I will have to sit there and suck it up as my child lobs dinner rolls at my neck and throws sticky handfuls of fruit in my eyes, because that’s what I taught him to do with food.  I don’t know the first thing about how to make this child respect his food, but I suspect the solution is a little more complex than just throwing his dinner in his face.