Yesterday at Jersey Mike's I'm waiting to get a sub. This woman who was ahead of me was asking her daughter who is around 5 or 6 what sub does she want; her daughter clearly doesn't know and is overwhelmed. The mom starts getting upset and starts asking her "Ok what meat do you want? Ham, chicken, salami?" The daughter responds with "I don't know, cubed meat" The argue back and forth for about 5 minutes before she realizes her daughter wants the chicken philly sub.
What really put me over the edge is the mom eventually started saying "What do you want?!?! I can't make a choice for you" WTF?!?!? she is your daughter, order the fucking sandwich and go. It took me back to my co-worker who has two kids, 4 & 1, and always complains that they only place they can go to is Olive Garden because their kids are so obnoxious. Apparently he allows the kids to just keep ordering shit off the menu, or ordering stuff that isn't even on the menu like Hot Dogs. I asked him why he does this and he says "we want our kids to have a choice in what they eat".
I guess I'm finally turning the corner and becoming an old man because my parents either never took me out or said "You can have A or B or nothing at all".
See, I think that the IDEA is sound, but the EXECUTION blows. We have this problem with my 11 year old. The fact is, they CAN'T have "free choice", because it would be pizza, hamburgers and ice cream all day every day if they did. We have no problem narrowing down to a choice of one or two.
And not for nothing, but there is life- benefit to NOT having a choice. When you get into a business meeting and there are just turkey sandwiches there, or you're traveling and all that's available at that moment is... whatever, tuna sandwiches, you have to figure out how to survive. It's STUNNING to me how many kids have never been faced with the "problem" of eating what's in front of you, whether it's your first choice or not. For various reasons (not all of them bad or negative) my 11 year old is like that. He likes his tacos with meat and cheese (same with his burgers). When I first came on the scene if a burger came with lettuce and tomato (yes, lettuce and tomato, i.e. not something that is hard to remove) it was like a catastrophe. This weekend his tacos came with sour cream, tomatoes and lettuce. And cutting the conversation short, in so many words, I said "look bud, this isn't about "perfect tacos" and "these tacos". It's about "these tacos" and "NO tacos". So is a little lettuce and a little sour cream worth NO tacos at all?"
He ate them. No one died, or puked, or had any other notable medical condition.