I’m sure it would
change the way they behave for sure.
And give them a good
lesson.
To the grandparents, I
mean.
Have you ever felt
like this?
You are trying to
teach a hard lesson to your child, and in comes the grandparent and spoils it
all.
When my son was
little, he wouldn’t eat meat.
At the age of two and
half years he told me that he was not a carnivore but a leaf eater.
I blame it all on
dinosaur movies.
And he would not eat
meat if we wouldn’t make him.
Of course, by four he
had an anemia.
Because he didn’t like
to eat his vegetables either.
I was working really
hard, trying to teach him to eat everything he had.
Telling him that the carnivore
dinosaurs weren’t evil, it was just their nature to eat other dinosaurs.
And that it was
important that we treated animals humanely but that we needed to eat that meat.
We needed the protein,
he especially to develop correctly.
When I told him that
his cat eats meat and kills little animals like mice to get it, he cried and
wouldn’t pet it for two weeks.
So, how this relates
to grandparents?
At that time we lived
very close to Mikael’s father’s family.
His father has three
sisters who have their own families and his parents have an apartment in the
same building where they would live occasionally.
When I had meat for
food, or vegetable or anything Mikael wouldn’t want to eat, he would go
shopping for lunch.
He would visit his
aunts to see if they had anything better.
And finally he would
go to visit his grandmother who would cook him something because his mom had
done nothing for him for food.
Or because the food
that his mom cooked tasted so bad and his grandmother knew just how to cook the
food he liked.
He was less than four
years old and he already knew how to get things by sweet talking to people.
I would try to explain
his grandmother why he needed to learn to eat different kind of food.
Why it was so
imperative that he ate his meat and vegetables.
Not just potato soup
with cheese.
Or noodles with
cheese.
Or an occasional fried
egg.
You can imagine my
frustration when she told me that she couldn’t say no to a hungry child.
There are other
occasions when I have felt like spanking both my son’s paternal grandparents.
Usually it’s because
they go completely against our house rules.
Like the time when he’s
supposed to be in bed.
Or giving him candy and
sweets in between the meals.
Or letting him to
watch horror movies or other movies meant for older children or youth.
Or thinking that swear
words from a toddler were just cute.
Oh, how many times
have I wanted to spank the grandparents.
He is almost ten now
and when he visits his grandparents it takes us days to get back to routine.
It is not as bad with
my parents because we have a better communication.
And also because we
usually agree on the rules.
After all they raised
me, so they have an unfair advantage.
But I still think that
grandparents should respect the mother and the father.
They are the parents
and they have the responsibility to raise their children.
Why is it necessary to
make the job even harder?
