Just Say "No" to Oatmeal Air Hockey

I remember the first time M turned to me with the sweet phrase, “Someday, when we are parents…”

We were spending Thanksgiving weekend at a hippy, heaven-on-earth hot springs resort in the mountains of Oregon. But our non-parent asses had landed square in the midst of a “family weekend.” The kids outnumbered the adults about two to one, which was mostly okay. Except for the rat family. Since I used the word hippy in a positive light already, I feel free to invoke its dark twin now: this family was everything wrong with hippiness. Dirty, smelly and oblivious. Six kids under the age of ten who swarmed into the mess hall to create more noise and chaos than the other 150 people combined. A totally overwhelmed mom who made more threats than she had the bandwidth to carry out, a totally checked out father who was under the impression that being a dude was being a dad.

The aforementioned sweet phrase dropped from M’s lips after we watched Dude Dad finally notice that while breast-feeding, Mom couldn’t prevent the twins from playing air hockey with their oatmeal, her screaming from across the room notwithstanding. Did Dude Dad rise and intervene? Of course not. But he did call out to the oldest, who was, like dad, chilling across the room with his peeps. “Hey little dude, could you help out your mom?” To which little dude replied, “Sorry Dad. I’m not really feeling that vibe right now? So I think I’ll just mellow here.”

Un. Believable.

And M said, “When we are parents, there are going to be some Yeses and some No’s. And the No’s will mean No.”

Which is easier said than done. But, yes Virginia, aka Jocelyn, whose LOL rant/comment on my last post inspired this one, yes, it has to be done.

(btw: We both came home from that weekend with pink eye. Plus, our luggage got sprayed by a civet cat… I don’t know why M won’t go back there with me.)

Anyway. Back to the question at hand: which is how to not be that mom. That mom who never says no, or worse, never means it. I’m there, girl. But I don’t believe it's black and white. I think you push your kids to do the best they can and hopefully you’ve got enough sense not to take a toddler who can’t sit still (like mine) out to dinner, lock him in a high chair for half an hour and then put him in a timeout for throwing his french fries. I’ve seen that one too. Saying “No” is sometimes too easy.

What’s hard is knowing what “the best” is, and setting the bar high enough. What’s hard is setting it too high, and then punishing them for failing. What’s hard is motherhood, which is threading the needle all the time.

Look, I don’t mean to get wishy-washy here. I’ve been to the wedding with the baby who screamed through the whole thing. But I think it comes down to two things:

1. When you say “No,” mean it.
2. If you can’t say “No,” and your kid is being a pain in the ass, go home.

The rest is the poetry of setting expectations, and encouraging and teaching, and loving your kids into being their best.

The rest is your business.

Unless you blog about it.