Mealtime Mockery

As the elder native settles into his 4th year of life, I am observing a new attitude developing. It is one of much sarcasm and disdain aimed at his caretaker. I had expected this phase of mockery to hit as the native moved into his teenage years but I fear I was not prepared for it at the ripe age of 4. Even more fascinating is that the younger native, though only 2 years old is also picking up this lovely new brashness.

For instance; there is a daily battle that now takes place over mealtime. I spend a good deal of my late afternoon preparing well gathered supplies and assembling them to make nutritious and filling meals, however the minute it is plated the elder native will glare at me with disgust and inform me that he has no intention of trying such "dribble." The younger native will inevitably chime in to agree with his sibling. They continue to amuse themselves by using their newly found sarcasm to defeat me. I learned quickly not to tell them that they were not to get up until they cleaned their plates as their response to that was to dump their plates, (food and all) in the basin and proudly, yet snidely declare, “it’s clean!”

Then, (perhaps more fascinating and disturbing), when in these battles, suddenly and without intention, the voice of my former caretaker mysteriously escapes my lips with sentences like: “you can’t say you don’t like it if you haven’t even tried it,” “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” or “do you know how lucky you are to have someone preparing you nutritious hot meals every night…”(oh yep, there it is, hello mom, when did you get here?). Not that it does any good, because the natives have both a stronger will than I; and I fear...more intelligence.

Last night amidst the mealtime battle I took a stand and let the natives know that they had to try one morsel of the meal if they were to receive anything else. After many times of back and forth on the matter the elder native surprisingly conceded, (insert look of contempt here) and tried the meal; only to be exceedingly surprised with himself as he was quite pleased with it. He requested a beverage to accompany his meal. I informed him that he would get what he wanted by using the “magic word.” He replied with, “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.” Apparently that was the magic word because after I finished laughing, I got him his drink.