Pick your battles

Generally I’m a calm, rational and patient parent, after all we’ve been through as a family not much can really shake my patience.

But there’s always that one time, that time were your patience is tested by such inconceivable child logic that you can literally feel your brain on the verge of imploding inside your skull.

Breakfast was finished and the morning off to a lovely start. As I sent him off for a shower I reminded him,
“Don’t forget to back your bag for school when you’re done sweetheart”.

I continued about my morning preparations, listening to his shower medley for the day, consisting of Grease, Adele and Justin Beiber, belted at the top of his lungs of course. The usual morning noises continued, doors and drawers opening, closing, rustling, shaking and squawking. Twenty minutes later he emerged, dressed and ready, school bag in one hand and book in the other.

“I’m ready” he stated as he plonked himself down on the couch and buried his nose into his book, a practice he has taken to of late.

As I returned from the kitchen with his lunch box in hand I asked,
“Have you packed your bag?”
“Yep”
Opening his bag I was baffled to find it was empty, completely empty, barren, not even a single book thrown in for good measure.
“Mate, there’s nothing in here, why did you lie about that?” I queried calmly.

He turned to me with a look of utter bewilderment, a look he conjures up often, for dramatic effect.
“What?”
“There’s nothing in here” I repeated in exasperation.
“But, I packed it!”
He looked at me with such earnest conviction, the bag was empty, we were the only people in the house, what did he expect me to believe had happened to his bag?

“Mate, if you had packed your bag wouldn’t there be something in it?”
He got up, looked at the bag and gazed at me dumbfounded.
“But, I did pack it!”
“Then where are your books?”
At this point he chose the response that every parent loathes, the one that makes the muscles in your face start to involuntarily twitch and body convulse, he shrugged.

Attempting to maintain some form of composure and not completely lose my mind I asked him,
“If you’d packed your bag, wouldn’t there be something in it it?
Again, as though attempting to tear away shreds of my sanity moment by moment he stared blankly and responded
“I dunno?”
Blood pressure rising and grey hairs slowly starting to form across my skull, I tried again, surely I could highlight the logic of this situation to him?
“There is nothing in this bag, it is completely empty, no-one else is here to have unpacked it. You have not packed your bag, have you?”
His eyes widened, as they started to glisten with tears his bottom lip started to tremble,
“But… I did!” He sobbed quietly.

Was I missing something? A magical pocket contained within the bag that made all these books seemingly invisible? I walked into his room as calmly as I could, he followed me close behind. There sitting atop his desk were his pile of school books, precariously stacked and completely unmoved from the day before. He stared at them, appearing shocked. The evidence lay before us like a crime scene, untouched and painting the clearest of pictures. Now of course I was going to get a human response!

“There you go, they’re right here. You haven’t packed them mate, it’s plain as day.”

I’m sure he must have been possessed, clearly something other worldly was taking place in his brain, there was no other explanation.

“I did, I packed them!” He exclaimed.

“If you had packed them then they would have been in your bag, they’re not! You’re bag is empty and your books are right here!” I screeched at a volume so high pitched every dog in the neighbourhood started to howl. Any higher and glass would have started to break.

There wasn’t much more of this logic my brain could take, slowly but surely I was starting to doubt my own sanity, was this a Jedi mind game or a war of willpower?

I stared at him for a moment as I took a few deep breaths.

“Mate, I don’t know why you’re continuing to lie about this but right now you need to pack your bag so we can get you to school”.

He went to speak, I had to cut him off.

“No, no more, please just pack your bag, now.”

There was just no logic to this situation, this wasn’t something that he could possibly lie himself out of, the evidence was being presented to him plain as day. Somewhere in his head the lies and the truth were rolling together, somewhere in there perhaps he thought he was telling the truth?

This time there were books in his bag, no magical powers had removed them. We headed to the car and started for school, calmer and ready to settle this before we arrived I figured he was ready to accept the situation.

“Darling, do you understand why dad was getting upset don’t you?”

Eyes downcast and not looking at me, he mumbled a response.
“Yes”
“Great, so mate obviously you could see then that there was nothing in your bag, you clearly hadn’t packed anything in there.”

He must have wanted to push me over the edge, surely, there was no other explanation, he turned and looked at me again.
“I did pack it though” he said quietly.

Slowly and carefully I pulled the car over to a gentle stop on the side of the road. I stared at him intently, trying to read his expression, attempting to find something to give away what was going on in there.

“Mate, ok, do you think that maybe, perhaps, you thought about packing your bag? Maybe you thought about it so much that you just think that you must have packed it, even though you can see that it wasn’t packed? Do you think maybe that is what happened?”

A moment of realisation flickered across his eyes. Either I’d struck the nail on the head or he’d found a way out. Regardless I finally got something.

“Yes…” He murmured.

Success!

There’s no telling what happened that morning, what was going on in his head or why he just couldn’t acknowledge what was going on. Regardless it was another lesson in trying to understand his mind.

I called my darling partner to debrief later that day, his response was simple.

“You know, sometimes you need to just pick your battles”.

Yes, yes you do.

Advertisement