My son is a really sweet kid. I just want to say that up front. He's usually nice and caring. He's always hilarious. But he gets on these bossy kicks where he'll argue everything you say and tell you that you're wrong and try to correct your every word.
It's... um... well, what's a nice word for "Poke-Me-In-The-Eyeball Infuriating?"1 That's what it is.
It's not all the time. It comes in waves. And those waves cause me severe sea-sickness.
Let me give you just a little taste of this habit. This weekend, we did a lot of family stuff out and about. Throughout everything we did, Jono kept correcting me.
"Dad, that girl told a lie."
"No, I think she just made a mistake."
"No. Grandma said it. She was lying." (Disclaimer: Grandma may not have said this.)
We agreed to disagree on this one.
Then we went to lunch. My wife explained to Jono that he needed to eat all his food.
"I think I only have to eat a number of bites. How many bites do I have to eat?"
"All of it."
"How did you say that? I just eat a number of bites."
"No, all of it."
This time we did NOT agree to disagree. He ate his food. Well, actually, he only ate until the point where he said he felt like he might get sick. And it even seemed legit. We allowed him to forgo the last couple of bites to avoid public vomiting.
Yeah, we don't mess around. We force our kid to eat to the point of illness. We're good parents.
We went to a museum and a toy store and we had lots of fun. Jono was great most of the time but every now and then he would start to get bossy. We kept warning him that this behavior needed to stop. It would stop for a while but then start to creep back in.
On the drive home, Jono dropped one of his toys. He asked if we could get it for him. On this particular day, I had left the Batmobile in the garage and we were driving the minivan. So I wasn't able to use the auto-pilot feature. This meant (annoyingly) that I had to remain in the driver's seat the ENTIRE time I was driving. This (unfortunately) made it impossible to retrieve toys from the back seat.
"We'll have to get that toy when we get home, Jono."
"I was talking to Mom."
"Well, Mom's busy, too. We'll just have to get it at home."
"I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to Mom."
At this point, I lost my cool a bit.
"Jono, stop being so bossy! It doesn't matter who you were talking to. I'm answering! And you just have to wait! Do you see me driving this car? If I stop to help you, wouldn't we CRASH? You just need to be patient!"
The van got quiet; the peaceful silence of a grumpy father who shall not be pestered again. The silence... of a few brief moments.
"Hey... can you take this?"
A quick scan of the rear-view mirror showed that my son was trying to pass his drink up to the front seat where it fits nicely into our cup holder. I reached back and took the cup.
"... I wasn't talking to you."
Ok, remember how I said I lost my cool a bit? The thaw was complete at this point.
"What?! Seriously, Jono, it doesn't matter who you were talking to! Stop being so bossy!"
Silence.
And then...
"I just don't want to crash."
1 Grammarians generally agree that this word is "Belieber."↩
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