Mornings with a 12 year old

[crschmidt]

"I need mom to stop at the store and bring me a snack."
"What do you want?"
"I don't care, I'll eat anything."
"Okay, how about you just grab some of the cookies from the shelf?"
"Anything but those, those are gross."
"Okay, you've got to tell us *what* you want, I can't randomly guess if you're just going to say it's gross."
"I don't know what I want!"
"How about pop tarts?"
"As a snack?"
"Sure."
"On second thought, I'll just have nothing."

Child, I'm not asking you anything difficult here, I'm just telling you I *can't read your mind*.

(Then again, this is a lesson that the two adult women in my life haven't learned either; why I thought the 12 year old would have learned it is beyond me.)

Comments

[hep.livejournal.com]

they don't learn it by 15 (or if they are male) in my household either. i spend about 30% of my day playing "what do you WANT to eat" with either children or adults here.

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think 客气 is the order of the day here.

(客气 overload can lead to ridiculous situations where you end up going to a restaurant nobody wanted to go to because nobody wanted to look selfish by going to the restaurant they wanted if nobody else wanted it. So you go to a restaurant everyone hates to satisfy everyone. Sure, you don't have to be Chinese to experience this, but this kind of thing is actually the goal of 客气 as opposed to some kind of accidental resentment-causing situation. You go away thinking, Mission accomplished! instead of, Isn't there an episode of Seinfeld about this kind of bullshit?) — Cracked

I actually had to persuade Alicia on her birthday on Friday to pick what kind of food she wanted. Not what restaurant, that was hopeless. She picked a restaurant she doesn't enjoy but her younger sister does, or at least she thinks her younger sister does — 客气 from a 鬼佬 no less — and I finally managed to talk her around to 寿司, which she does like after three hours of persuasion and pretending I wanted 寿司. (Which I did, actually, but that wasn't the bloody point. I was seriously jonesing for some 卵焼き but that wasn't the point, the point was it was her birthday, it comes annually, and she should get some say in the food. Hello.)

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

Oh, and she's back on Facebook now — they unlocked her account post-COPPA — so tell your ladies. :)