Toddler Tales: An Older Dad Survives the Raising of Young Children in Modern America

by Lee B. Mulder

I said. Brendan and I toured the store, somewhat in awe of the hundreds of bright bulbs, but very careful to not touch the merchandise. Fifteen minutes passed. Then twenty. Brendan kept looking at all the tags hanging from the ceiling. In the lighting store, there are hundreds of fixtures on the ceiling, large, fancy crystal chandeliers, delicate, fluted Victorian reproductions, and beveled brass creations... each one with a pull tag attached to an on-off switch by a length of 50-pound test fishing line.

  Imagine the wonder to a grabby young boy to be put within arm's reach of a sea of dangling tags. Of course, he began to clutch and pull, and as he did, the lamps began to flash on and off, and gently bump into each other in a crescendo of glass against glass.

  Suddenly, the clerk was at my side. "I'll be more than happy to help you now," she said, watching the chandeliers sway.

  "Oh, no hurry," I replied. "Take your time." Another light blinked on, another fixture spun off balance.

  "No, please. I insist!! What can I do for you?... maybe he would be more comfortable on the floor," she said.

  "Oh, okay,” I said. “I'm here to pick up an order.” We were out of the store in five minutes, our business completed. I hugged Brendan and whispered "Attaboy" as we left.

  It's quite obvious that I am not the only one using his children as a strategic weapon in life.

  Back before you could do things on-line, my friend Karen went to her local American Airlines ticket office to cash in some frequent flyer mileage for tickets to Hawaii. She not only wanted her tickets, but a rental car and a deal on the hotel room. The rules clearly stated that airfare would be covered by frequent flyer points, but they didn't exactly mention hotels or rental cars.

  The rules hadn't counted on Althea, an 18 month-old with a doll face, but hands like Michael Jordan.

  Karen stepped up to the counter and sat Althea on it as she opened her conversation with the clerk. She stated in one sentence what she wanted and, for a brief moment, the clerk started to explain that it would simply not be possible to grant all those things for the points being awarded. But in that time...

  and this really should be rerun in slow motion as it all occurred in about five seconds, Althea tipped over a pencil holder and, as the clerk bent to catch the pencils, Althea wadded up the paperwork on the desk, grabbed the clerk's neckerchief when she bent to minimize that damage, and then, as the airline employee, a fortyish blonde, and the child stared each other down, Althea drooled into the dot matrix printer.

  Karen quickly stepped in to loosen the death grip her child had on the clerk with a quick "sorry." She began to put the squirming Althea back on the counter when she was interrupted with...

  "...That's okay. I think we can get you everything you need. You entertain cutie pie... on the floor... I'll take care of the details." She riffled the keyboard with lightning speed and Karen walked out with her travel package. Althea took a nap.

  But my favorite place to watch the adolescent arsenal is at the grocery store on Saturday mornings. In our town, it seems the only day to do grocery shopping is Saturday and, for some reason, the entire town shows up before noon. It is possible to get at merchandise on the shelves, but the checkout lines are impossibly long queues of people pushing carts loaded with enough supplies to get through the next war.

  Here's the ploy, using a mom with one cart and two kids, 'way back in line. The two accomplices should be under four years old. The first sits in the cart screaming bloody murder and grabbing for every other cart within reach... approximately a ten foot radius. The partner, meanwhile, repeatedly pushes the cart onto the ankles of the lady immediately ahead in line.

  Within about five minutes, that person yields to the silent pleas of her neighbors and the shooting pains in her legs to let the rancorous children play through and skip ahead in line.

  "Oh, you needn't do that," the mother protests. "We'll wait our turn."

  "No, that's all right," the victim insists. "Please go ahead."

  You get the idea that if one more exchange of dialog were to occur, it would sound like:

  "No, really, you go ahead, you were here first and you have certainly been waiting longer than we have."

  "For Chrissake, go ahead of me. My ankles can't take it anymore. If your little brat hits me one more time, I'll feed it to the scanner!"

  But instead, everyone is very civil and the exchange never takes place. You see, though, that our shrewd mom has just shaved ten minutes off her line time. Even as she mentally stencils one more enemy on the side of her shopping cart, the team begins to work in tandem again on the next victim, who falls much faster this time now that she's onto the remedy. Thus, our savvy shopper gets through the line in no time, somewhat disappointed that she hasn't beaten her own world's record of 12.2 minutes in a line of ten people or more. Well, there's always next week.

  See what I mean? Parents often gripe about how difficult it is to raise small children, and how they alter your lifestyle. I'm here to say that children were meant to be used and personally, I've never seen anything better than a well-trained attack child for getting fast service.

  The Perfect Negotiator

  The room is dim, lit like a pool hall with a string of bare-bulb lamps hanging over the length of the table. On one side of the table sits management, clean-scrubbed and refined in pinstriped suits, though the suit jackets have long since been doffed with the sleeves of French-cuffed shirts rolled up. Ties are askew and collars are open for, across the table, through the haze of cigar and cigarette smoke, sits Labor, a phalanx of bulldogs, large men, uncomfortable in ties and shirts, but determined to get what they want. It's contract time, that tri-annual festival of American business that pits owner against worker in a duel of wits and charm to arrive at a conclusion where nobody really gets what they want.

  My son should be in that room because, even at four years of age, he is the perfect negotiator.

  "I want a cookie," he says.

  "You can't have a cookie because it's too close to dinner time," Dad says.

  "But I WANT a cookie," he says.

  "I said no."

  "I want it, I want it, I want it," he yowls, incessantly, ever louder. His face reddens. Tears spurt from his eyes. The nose starts to run. My protests, shouts and threats are lost in the sharp echoes of his fury. I cave in again.

  "All RIGHT! Just one." That's all it takes. A little switch trips somewhere and the yowling stops, the water flow to the eyes and nose is shut off, and with the exception of a sniffle or two, he is my bright little angel boy once again.

  Then it is dinnertime. Seated in front of a well-balanced, colorful meal of ridiculously miniscule portions, his opening comment is, "I don't want any dinner."

  "Fine," I say, "Then leave the table. And no snack tonight."

  "But I want a snack. How about if I eat one bite of meat and one bite of apple."

  "How about if you clean the plate," I reply.

  "But how 'bout this deal... I eat one bite of..."

  "No," I interrupt. "There's one deal on the table. It is your dinner. Stop offering terms and eat your food." He feigns submission and eats two bites.

  "How about..." he starts.

  "NO!" is the reply. He chews sullenly. When, at last, my plate is clean, I've complimented the chef and, as they say in Provence, l'expérience gastronomique est fini, my young heathen son is chasing peas around the plate and showing everyone the chewed food in his mouth.

  "Young man!" I command. "Eat your food!”

  “Then will I be done?"

  "Yes."

  "Then do I get a bedtime snack?"

  "We'll see. It depends. Stop talking and keep eating. It's nearly midnight." He eats 75% of his food and, when he asks yet again for the all-pervasive snack, is told he may have 75% of his snack."

  "It's a deal!" he shouts, slapping the table with the flat of his hand to seal the pact.

  Sometimes he allows the negotiations to be less one-sided. Take bedtime for example:

  "Son, it's tim
e to go to bed.”

  “Want a little bit of milk," he says.

  "If I give you milk, will you go to bed?" He ignores the Boolean logic.

  "Mommy sit rocking chair five minutes?"

  "If I give you milk and mommy for five minutes will you go to bed?" He ignores it again.

  "Turn on Raffi."

  "William, if I give you milk and mommy and Raffi, will you go to bed?"

  "Go mommy-daddy's bed." Ugh! Now I'm getting hot.

  "WILLIAM! If I give you milk and mommy and Raffi and our bed and the deed to the house and a large insurance policy on my life and a new car and a million dollars in the bank, WILL YOU GO TO BED?" He nods his reluctant, conciliatory assent.

  And when at last he is asleep, in my bed with my wife, filled with liquid and reassurances from his mother and his favorite folk singer, I feel my job is done but that I have set dangerous precedents. My opponent now knows how far he can push.

  "Is it a DEAL?" the swarthy man with the once-broken nose asks the people on the other side of the table. He receives only contemplative silence in return. "I said, IS IT A DEAL?" They nod grudgingly, secure with the thought that at least the union didn't ask for Raffi before bedtime. Management will safely tuck that one away in the file for the next round of negotiations with perhaps a younger, less tenacious union lawyer.

  Obedience Training Your Child

  I read all the books on how to raise a toddler and became convinced the best one around was by Barbara Wodehouse. Wodehouse has a stellar, worldwide reputation for obedience training of ... dogs.