“Colin and I had a fight at the bakery today,” Janine said, while dishing up some food for herself.
“Mummy!” Colin whispered urgently. “Don’t tell Daddy about that!”
I raised my eyebrows at both of them while chewing on my dinner. Colin turned to me.
“I had a bad day today,” he announced sadly.
“What happened, Colin?” I asked politely.
I put my knife and fork down to listen. We’ve been trying to teach the boys manners at the dinner table, and that means trying to set a good example. Why, I’ve not managed to work out, but if putting down my cutlery when I’m not using them keeps Janine happy, then it’s such a small thing to do.
“It wasn’t when we were at Glenda’s,” he explained. “That was good. It was later.”
I knew he and Andrew had spent part of the day with one of his school friends. His social calendar is slowly filling up, with numerous invitations from various friends. The main problem is that living out in the countryside, he can’t visit them whenever he wants.
“What went wrong?” I asked him gently.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbled, looking back at his food.
“Can I ask Mummy what happened?”
His head jerked up and down once. I took that as a yes.
I looked across the table at Janine.
“Colin and I had an argument in the newsagent about what sort of sticky-tape to get for the presents,” she said through gritted teeth.
We had two birthday parties to go to that weekend, and the boys were becoming more active in picking and wrapping presents. While, personally, I wouldn’t consider the type of sticky-tape used to seal the wrapping paper to be a highly critical part of the whole present-giving thing, I’ve learnt enough to appreciate that to a six-year-old, it could be. After all, this is the boy who, when he was younger, would eat toast cut into triangles, but considered toast cut into squares to be inedible. Things have to be just right, or “It’s ruined!” to use one of his favourite expressions.
“I bought the sticky-tape that didn’t come with a dispenser,” she growled. “He told me that that wasn’t right. It was also the wrong colour.”
I shrugged. I’d seen the tape they’d bought and it was the normal yellowish roll. We’d had the clear stuff recently, but for wrapping presents I didn’t see what difference it would make. The younger members of the family had a different opinion, apparently.
“Colin was still sulking when I took them to the bakery and offered to buy them a treat. I asked them what they would like.”
She paused dramatically.
“Colin then told me he hated me.”
“I didn’t say I hated you!” Colin protested.
Janine nodded her head to him once. “Okay, you didn’t,” she conceded.
Turning back to me, she added, “But he did say he didn’t like me and wasn’t happy.”
“What happened next?” I asked, as I was clearly expected to do.
“Some woman there told Colin that she wouldn’t buy treats for little boys who said things like that.”
I sat, frozen. What was I to say? There was no hint in how she said it as to whether she was upset because someone was telling her how to manage her kids, or if she happened to agree with them.
I took the smart way out, one learnt from many years of experience: I put a piece of food in my mouth and started chewing. While I was eating, I wouldn’t be expected to say anything. That’s been a hard-and-fast rule since the time we had a couple of work friends around for lunch one weekend, and Colin had scolded one of them:
“You shouldn’t talk with food in your mouth,” he’d stated pontifically.
Janine and I had stiffened in embarrassment, but Melissa took it well. She agreed with Colin and we then had a discussion on how often adults do talk with food in their mouths. Melissa and Darren had been great about being told off by a five-year-old, especially for a couple without children.
“Colin kept it together until we got back to the car,” Janine continued.
It has been noticed by several people that Colin takes a real delight in praise. All you need to do to get a huge grin from him is to say he’s done something really well. The flip-side is that he takes criticism very, very hard. Someone telling him off will upset him, and that’s usually when he tells me he’s had a bad day, even if it is only for a minor thing. His teacher once scolded him and some of his classmates for failing to put their library books in the container to go back to the library, and that was the only thing he could remember from school that day — everything else paled into insignificance after being told off.
“I had a bad day today, Daddy,” Colin repeated.
Janine frowned at Colin.
“You really shouldn’t tell someone that you don’t like them,” she told him.
“But, Mummy, I didn’t,” he protested with a cheeky grin. “I only said that to you, and I’m allowed to because you’re my mummy.”
The display of complex logic left both Janine and I speechless. I’m dreading what he comes up with when he’s a teenager.