Outnumbered Two to One

At some point this evening I hear this from across the house:

“Ow you bit me you little jerk! You broke the skin!”

I’m in the kitchen making dinner and shaking my head, waiting for the next installment. The voice in question is my tween’s, it rises steadily as her indignation increases tenfold. Eventually the skirmish will travel from my bedroom where they’re watching television to the kitchen where I, judge and jury, stand with wet hands and a jar of salsa.

“What?!” I inquire as my five-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter bustle in through the entryway, both talking at the same time.

“He bit me on the leg and he broke the skin and it really really hurts.”

“She bit me too but I don’t remember where and she’s being really mean to me.”

“Nuh-uh I only bit you after you bit me…”

“Because you grabbed me…”

“But I was playing…”

In unison now… “Mooooooooooooom.”

Ugh. Down comes the gavel.

“You’re both punished, keep your hands and mouths off each other, and go cry somewhere else. No video games till Thursday.”

Obviously neither of my children was paying close enough attention to the Yo Gabba Gabba episode where Muno bites Foofa for craps and giggles, then gets chided in song until he learns this valuable lesson.

“Don’t bite your friends.”

Or your siblings for that matter, it’s just not sanitary.

I don’t know how they did it, I just know that it happened.

This morning I sent off three well behaved, bright eyed, neatly groomed offspring to their respective schools. I kissed their ruddy cheeks, wished them a beautiful day, and watched them skip off toward the steel reinforced double doors of their public school education.

At some point during the day, something must have gone terribly, horribly wrong, because what was returned to me after dismissal were not the cherubic darlings I’d dispatched that morning, but some angry, gritty, whiny, mouthy replacements that looked and smelled like my kids but were possibly hardened ex-convicts or perhaps mental ward patients.

Seriously.

We had such an uneventful weekend. It was quiet, it was easy, it was unexpected. Maybe it was our approach - no responsibilities, no obligations, no expectations. We lazed, we ate, we joked, we watched TV. Now suddenly it’s Monday again and everyone is supposed to snap back in to submission, acquiesce to the strict constraints of time and authority. I guess it’s enough to make anyone hostile. They had their brief taste of freedom and of course they’re thirsty for more.

Who bears the brunt of their rebellion?

Why that’s Mom of course.

Because Dad is conveniently at work, and I am left with the chore of beating everyone in to submission. I’m sure he did it on purpose.

Should it take until almost 11 o’clock for a certain brood to finish the day’s homework assignments?

No, it shouldn’t.

I blame the school. For all their guidelines and curriculum and discipline…all that boring stuff that makes school such a drag.

Like my darling teen says, “I’d love school if it weren’t for all the learning.”

Yep, it’s gotta be the public schools.

The battle lines have been drawn. War is being waged and my daughters are once again sworn enemies. The tension is palpable, or maybe that’s the lingering scent of fried plantains in the house (we’ve got crappy ventilation). Either way, my teen and my tween are holding us hostage with their bickering.

At the heart of it is my tween’s new found strategy of completely ignoring her older sister’s existence. Indefinitely. Something that cuts my teen to her core as she considers herself, by rite of oldest child, to be the boss of everybody. And I mean everybody. To not be heard his her worst nightmare, it compounds her frustration exponentially.

More often than not I find myself siding with my tween because I’ve seen first hand how harsh her sister can be with her. Every question the tween poses, every request, every comment is met with hostility, sarcasm, and contempt. My tween is forever complaining about her sister’s mean streak, to the point where I gave her the following advice…

“Just ignore her. Ignore her when she’s being mean to you, ignore her when she’s nice, ignore her all the time.”

Oops. Er…

I didn’t actually remember uttering that little nugget of guidance. Then today after my teen’s rant about being invisible and how unfair it is for her younger sister to disregard her so plainly, I approached my tween and tried to convince her she couldn’t ignore her sister for the rest of their lives. They share a room, they share a house, they share the common bond of sisterhood.

To which my tween replied, “But you told me to do it.” Then promptly threw my words right back in my face. Oosh.

Needless to say, my teen who was sitting nearby was adequately appalled, while I attempted to back pedal in true stupid-mommy form.

I never actually expect them to listen to me, much less heed my advice. Jeez. If they were only so obedient in other arenas.