A Chip Off the Old Block

Once upon a time, that someone who came up with the saying that “your child will grow up to be just like you” must have had firsthand experience. If it wasn’t, then I think my own encounters are probably good enough to justify it and put some truth in that statement.

Elaina is starting to sound and look like a little “kaypoh”… little as in size and age but the “kaypoh-ness” in her is big enough to beat any of the adults in the family. She picks up the tone and mannerism from the female adults surrounding her. She will rest her 2 hands on her hip when trying to show her dismay even the tone she uses sounded just so familiar. She bosses everyone around like a parent talking down to a child or a superior exercising her power over the subordinates. Often, we end up having to self-reflect if we need to change ourselves in order to change her.

To make it worse, she has also picked up Singlish unknowingly and from who else other than us. I remember that Matty was using the less than perfect English at one point but it stopped after a while. Whilst I think there is nothing that bad about speaking another “language” it is hard to explain to a 3-year old why she should exercise some discretion from time to time or when to use what and who the target audience should be.

Matty is not any better except that he doesn’t mimic the tone and mannerisim but he uses our line of argument against us (talk about Karma!) not with the agenda of getting back but it still made us eat our words after that.

Couple of weeks back I told Matty that he needs to drink his milk in order to grow tall and strong and how I didn’t like milk when I was a child which resulted in me being less than the average height. Subsequent to that conversation, he will probe me every now and then on the reason why I didn’t take to the taste of milk. Because there was no logical explanation to that, I was only able to tell him that it was the taste. Wrong move… because shortly after that when I tried to make him swallow his greens, the next question that I was be met with was “Why didn’t you like your milk and why didn’t you drink your milk?” with him sounding innocent. I was dumbfounded. At that point in time, how I wish it was in me to tell him not to disobey his mother.

Making Matty eat his vegetables is equivalent to making him swallow poison, other than if it was mixed into his soup. We threaten, cajole, hid it in his rice and even explained to him the good of fibre. If we can make him take one leaf, it is as good as wining it big time. The father often go with the line of “you never know until you try it”. And yes that came back to bit him big time too when he outrightly told his son that he didn’t like apple juice (which the boy loves). Matty took what was said to him in the past about vegetables seriously and handed his dad a cup of apple juice muttering the exact same words – try it… if you don’t try it how do you know you won’t like it?