My mother is the first of five children born at the tail end of the baby boomer generation. I'm not sure if this gave my grandmother the patience of a saint or the manipulative skills of the devil himself. Perhaps she found a happy medium somewhere in between. Anyone who has raised small children knows that one of the great daily challenges is dinner time and getting the kids to settle down to eat. Mamaw, as she likes to be called (because whenever you call her name you automatically have to say Ma'am), discovered that the best way to get all five kids to drop whatever they were doing and rush to the dinner table was to serve peas.
Peas are not commonly known as a favorite food among most children. Indeed most of her children disliked the taste of peas and will avoid eating them to this very day. Except for Uncle Kevin. You see, Uncle Kevin was a notoriously finicky eater who would be perfectly happy eating peanut butter sandwiches every day of his life. But peas happened to be one of the few foods that he would merrily scarf down, much to his sibling's delight.
Uncle Kevin's brothers and sisters would often sit around the dinner table telling jokes and sharing funny stories. And when peas were on the menu they would watch his plate carefully in order to time their punchlines to the exact moment when a spoonful of peas entered Uncle Kevin's mouth. He would be so overcome with delight as to let out a deep belly-filled guffaw of laughter. As a result, the mouthful of peas came flying out of his overstuffed mouth like giant mushy BBs right at Mamaw, who had the unfortunate honor of being seated directly across from him.
Peas weren't the only food that caused poor Uncle Kevin trouble with his mother. Indeed his finicky eating habits emerged much earlier when he was a toddler. Detecting this trend, his mother tried to head off this bad habit before it became unmanageable. So suddenly one day after finishing his meal from his highchair, Uncle Kevin decided that he didn't like the taste of milk anymore. Determined to prevent him from adding yet another food to his quickly blooming list of inedibles, Mamaw decided to go on the offensive, "Kevin, drink your milk."
"No!"
"Kevin, you drink your milk this instant young man."
"No! I don't like it", he replied with the indignant pout of a typical three-year-old.
"That's it Kevin, you are not getting out of that highchair until you drink your milk."
Now, Mamaw was not the type of woman to make idle threats. And true to her word she left him in that highchair so he would drink his milk. Even as everyone else in the family finished their meal and were excused from the table. One by one Uncle Kevin's brothers and sisters abandoned him at the dinner table to fight his own battle of wills with their mother.
Finally, they were the only two left in the dining room, a mother determined to nourish her son, and a son adamantly defiant in the face of such tyranny. The tension of the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. And the remaining children cowered from the shadows wondering how this standoff might end.
Finally relenting, Mamaw looked her son square in the eye and said, "I mean it young man. I don't care how long you have to sit in that chair, but you are not getting up until you drink every last drop of milk from your cup." And so she stood up and left him to stew in his chair with a sippy cup full of milk as his only companion.
But Mamaw had underestimated the stubbornness of her eldest son. For there he sat, arms crossed on his tiny chest, staring at his milk, completely unmoved by the enticements of the cup. As Mamaw went about her usual evening routine: clearing the table, washing the dishes, folding the laundry, and tucking her remaining children into bed. All the while surreptitiously checking every once in a while to see if he tried to drink any milk. But still he sat, as hour after hour passed with not a drop of milk passing through his tiny lips.
Finally, as the midnight hour passed, Mamaw realized she could not force him to drink. But unwilling to admit defeat to her three-year-old son she instead hatched a new plan, "Kevin, it's past midnight and I'm tired and I want to go to bed. So you either drink all your milk right now or so help me God you will wear it!"
Sensing his opponent's flagging determination, Uncle Kevin's confidence in his imminent victory was renewed. "No!" came his retort, firm as ever and this time accompanied an assured grin.
Always true to her word, Mamaw snatched him out of that highchair and dropped him quite unceremoniously into the family bathtub. Whereupon she produced the offending milk cup and proceeded to dump the entire contents over his head, much to his chagrin (and squalling cries).
They both learned a valuable lesson that day: Kevin, that stubbornness is indeed an inherited trait; and Mamaw, that open ended threats are entirely too time-consuming to be effective when disciplining her own stubborn children.
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