A Dog's Day
Most parents are not weeding out foolishness like this wise dad, but are allowing it to continue, thinking it must just be just a passing stage. Discounting all the early signs, parents are shocked and surprised when their children grow up to be teenage fools.
Dear Pearls,We had a training session for a silly son not long ago, which I thought you might enjoy hearing. One day while at the dinner table, the children and I were talking and carrying on, when my daughter says to me, “Bubba ate dog food today”. My face must have reflected confusion because I surely couldn’t believe I had heard her correctly. “What?” So she says again, “Bubba ate dog food today.” At this, all the kids started giggling. I turned to my eight-year-old son and asked him, “Did you eat dog food?” Giggling, he answered, “Yes.” Then my daughter who is three years old spoke up and said, “I did too.” So I asked her, “Why did you do that?” She answered, “Because Bubba did.” Then I asked my son why he ate dog food, and he said, “I just wanted to see what it tasted like.”
When I began to tell him about how he as the older brother needed to be more mindful of what he’s doing because it will/can influence his younger brothers and sisters, he just laughed and thought it was funny. He took my admonition very lightly, pretty much ignoring what I was saying. He then proceeded to say how he wanted to eat more dog food.
Where had my wise son gone? I set out to find him again. So I set him up for a fall. “You do?” I asked, “Don’t you think that’s pretty silly, seeing that your mother fixes us good food, and here you are wanting to eat dog food?” While I was talking, he got up from the table, still giggling, then went over and got a handful of dog food and commenced eating it. I have to admit, at this point, I was genuinely disgusted, both at his silliness and at the thought of him eating dog food. My face must have reflected my feelings, because he just laughed and said in a challenging way, “Whaaat?” As if it was no big deal, and like he seriously enjoyed eating the dog food.
This was getting gross, besides the fact that my sober son was acting like a goofy nincompoop. I stopped right there with dinner and told him that since he thought it was so funny to eat dog food and since he seemed to enjoy it so much, he had to give the dog his food and he could not have anything else for dinner or breakfast but dog food. We had a fine dinner. My wife can out-cook any woman alive. He is a growing boy with a BIG appetite.
Oh, he tried to play it off, but the gravity of the consequence for his foolishness began to set in after about two minutes of wallowing the dry, gritty stuff around in his mouth, until he had to spit it out. His countenance changed, his giggling stopped and his foolishness was over. He had repented. He was hungry, but our deal was binding. He stayed hungry until the next day. I got my sober son back.
– An Alert Dad
