Don't Make Me Angry Mr. McGee

Reid is a strange little man. He's growing by leaps and bounds, of course, and we're routinely amazed to look over at this rapidly changing little man in our house and say, 'How did he get so big? What happened to our little boy?'



Tonight we had a special sort of moment. It was called a total meltdown.

Lately, Reid has been helping us cook. He will stand alongside K most of the time, or me some of the time, pretend to be doing something industrial and cooking-related. To plan for it, he says 'cook' over and over again. It's quite cute. So we put him in a chair and gave him a plastic butter knife and a half an apple. Now, he says 'cook' and pushes his chair over to the cutting board in his little spot and sets to work with all sorts of crazy technologies, collecting spare spices (usually lemon pepper or garlic powder) in one plastic container and pouring it into another, and who knows what else.

Tonight, we had a nice lemon pepper-garlic salt-sesame seed mixture going. He was pouring it from the half-cup measure to something else, quite occupied. I finished the dinner and declared it was time to move over to the table to eat the wonderful dinner Reid had made.

Meltdown.

Reid couldn't believe I was attempting to move to dinner. Truly astounding. He was pouring out the tears, snot was running down his face, his lungs were desperate of air. He couldn't believe that he was done cooking. I had clearly laid the groundwork for the shift from 'cook' to dinner. I made a big show of pretend adding his special mixture to the chicken I cooked. He became irate. I moved him to his booster chair and he continued to wail. I attempted to play through the pain, served him up some chicken, but it was too late. The entire system had completely unwound. We were at an impasse.

I ate some bites of food. Reid gulped helplessly for air.

This was an important moment in parenting.

I could have buckled, pushed him back to the butcher block, left him to perfect his recipe. But this would this have been a strategic parenting setback. I waited. Reid wailed. We went to the time-out chair.

The time-out chair has been employed sporadically since the epic early failure (in which we counted to ten and then Reid applauded), and we're getting pretty good at it by now.

I told him he would need to sit in the chair until I told him he could get up. I then ate in silence while the boy moaned in grief. Then he went quiet, too. A few minutes later, I went in and he was smiling. I asked him if he was ready to eat. We had a nice dinner together. He was chatting about his day, babbling and giggling. Who is this little man? Where was the wailing infant from five minutes ago?