December 18, 2004 - Saturday
We all went to Rip's house this evening for homemade pizza. It was a fun night and we all had a good time. Sure, Harry bonked his head while he and Rip were fooling around wrestling and Rip was upset for a while at the beginning because he had lost his Bionicle, but it was all typical families-with-children stuff. So was Jeremy's table behavior, I suppose. Unfortunately, he had one of his bouts of stubbornness at dinner and refused to eat his pizza.

I suppose in hindsight I should never have said we were having pizza. After all, Rip's dad had the boys each decide what they wanted on their pizza and both my boys opted for nothing more than cheese, not even sauce. That left dough and cheese, the true staples of Jeremy's diet and surely had it not been called "pizza" Jeremy would have been fine. But, "pizza" was the word around the kitchen and I didn't think I could avoid it. Mostly I thought if Jeremy just tried it, and realized it was nothing more than those things which he likes, everything would work out. And, if he tried it and still didn't like it we would just make him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We'd even talked with Rip's mother about that possibility beforehand. But, somehow events just got set into motion. Jeremy, upon hearing the word pizza, didn't want to try the dough and cheese. When he did try it, under duress, he had already made up his mind that he wasn't going to like it and played chipmunk - a tremendously annoying habit that he has - with the small bite for at least 10-15 minutes. I keep trying to convince him, and did so again tonight ,that if he just swallows, Harry gets this, then the taste will be gone and he can eat something else. But, Jeremy remains steadfast and, again tonight, didn't swallow his small bit of dough and cheese until well after dinner and much of the way through dessert. Call me a tyrant, but since he's been so blatantly silly about this sort of thing for the last week, I told him that he would have to eat at least a small triangle of his personal pizza before he'd get any dessert. And, of course, when he did that, he brightly exclaimed that he liked it, perhaps as some sort of "I changed my mind" defense mechanism, I don't know.

Jeremy probably doesn't understand about being rude at someone else's house or in public, but when he started stubbornly complaining about some silly little thing as we started our short (maybe 10th of a mile) walk home, I decided he was going to learn about it. I picked him up and carried him all the way home, and not all too gently. (Interestingly, Harry probably would have liked being carried, but Jeremy likes to walk, although that's not why I did it. Jeremy just needed to get home without any more stalling.) When he and I got home, well ahead of Harry and his mother, I pulled off his coat and boots. He protested a little, but my mood had changed from some degree of patience at a little boy's power struggle to much less patience. Jeremy was in his room with the lights out before Harry and his mother got their coats off. His mother asked if she should go in and say goodnight and that not doing so would be a big deal. I agreed it would be and that I thought that would be appropriate given his behavior.

Perhaps that's too harsh and I overreacted. I did get as angry as I have ever gotten with Jeremy, but not without a conscious awareness that I was going there. After all, it seems to me that there are times when getting visibly angry serves a purpose, at least if it doesn't happen very much, and it seems to me that being polite at someone else's house shouldn't be up for negotiation. What's more, this was ultimately the culmination of a week of Jeremy acting particularly poorly. He'd tried it out, now it was enough. I know that I could have defused the situation earlier by just giving in and letting Jeremy eat something else, but we've tried hard to instill good eating habits, like politely trying things before expressing dislike, and going against that, even this once, would seem like re-enforcing Jeremy's bad behavior. Rip's dad, a logical thinker and someone with whom I seem to share a lot of parental approaches, suggested that stubbornness is not necessarily a bad thing, and can even be an asset in life and thus not something to "squash." I told of Jeremy's amazing game of chicken, agreeing that you just have to admire his gumption. But, I personally know all too well that stubbornness can be trouble, too. The point with Jeremy is that he can be stubborn if he wants, but that his stubbornness will often have consequences. In this case, he did not have dessert with the rest of us, nor did he get up to play with Rip and Harry when they were done eating. Mostly, I think I was just being consistent, doing what we've always said we would do and responding as we've said. If nothing else about it was right, at least I think that was.


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