Parenting from the trenches — Scare me up a striped shirt

Written by Julie Butler Evans
Saturday, 31 October 2009 05:44

My parenting philosophy when my sons Blake and Kenny were young was “Divide and conquer.” Separating them whenever possible to avoid confrontations was a must. We actually kept this credo alive until the boys turned 15 and 17, and decided that they actually liked one another.

Sibling rivalry was alive and well in our house. Take two boys, stir in a less-than-two-year age gap, and you’ll get fights over seemingly anything and everything. I often felt that I should have been wearing a whistle and a referee’s shirt. “Mom! Kenny’s playing with my truck!”

“Mommy! Blake ate all the cookies!”

“Work it out!” I would snap back, most times knowing full well that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in you-know-where that the suggested peace treaty would in all actuality come to fruition.

There were tears, pushing, pulling and “pants-ing.” One time a Matchbox car landed on Kenny’s still fragile, barely toddler-aged forehead, necessitating a trip to the emergency room, courtesy of Blake. On many occasions the umpire would impose time-outs, and/or withhold television and video game privileges: “Yer ouuuuuuuuut!,” I would bellow. The players would of course argue with the ump, but this was never an intelligent move on their part.

Isn’t refereeing your children’s real and imagined grievances one of the most annoying parts of a parent’s job description? I love it (Not!) when I get a call from home, while I’m at dinner, at the grocery store, driving the car or on a Metro-North train, from an irate child expecting me to pronounce strike three on a sibling at a distance. Some of their arguments make sense, while others are completely comical, ergo, unnecessary.

My younger two kids didn’t collide as much as the older boys, and I am not certain if the reason is because one is a girl and one is a boy (though that sure didn’t stop me and my brother), or that more than likely the less adversarial relationship is due to the three-year age difference. However, now that they are both teenagers, the bickering has increased in the aforementioned comical vein.

I now need to employ my referee whistle regarding who watches which TV show where; Jess wants to watch her beloved Jonas brothers on the Disney Channel on the “big” television screen downstairs (as opposed to the pretty much exact-same-sized screen upstairs in our bedroom), but Jack will be firmly mounted in front of ESPN and there is no way he is going to relinquish his spot on the couch, or give up the remote control. Whining ensues and is ignored by the mother; for some reason they don’t even attempt to engage their father in the nonsensical brother-sister power play.

The other fairly constant bickering involves who sits in the front passenger seat in my car.

“Shotgun! I’ve got ‘shotty!’” one or the other will declare while running — literally running — towards the car, even when it is in the garage! They practically knock over bicycles, containers of basketballs and baseballs, the recycle bin and each other in their wake. Exhausted by these proclamations and tantrums (Jess recently refused to get in the car for the morning drive to school because Jack had hopped in next to me), I have imposed these rules of the game: Jess gets the front on the way to school and Jack can claim the desired seat for afternoon pick-up. So far, mostly so good.

The battle for the front seat might just be universal once kids reach the legal age for sitting their tushes next to the driver. My friend Estella recently posted on her Facebook page: “The battles over who has shotgun have started!” To which fellow friend Melissa responded, “No one sits in my front seat because it’s piled up with stuff like my purse, books, coupons, tissues and water bottles that I don’t feel like moving. It works like a charm.” I spotted her at Saxe pick-up this week and can attest to that truth and to the chaotic state of her passenger headquarters. Her sons Chris and Nick seem none the wiser about the whole allure of the shotgun position.

“Tattletaling,” arguing and fussing over people, places and things seems a necessary evil of childhood. And negotiating a peace is a necessary evil for us.

Sometimes it’s all too ghastly.

Julie Butler Evans is the author of the recently published book, “Parenting from the Trenches: Anecdotes from the Front Lines of Child Rearing.”