Older Brothers

So I’m driving my Number One son somewhere out of town and ask him “What’s with you and your younger brother today?”

“Well. I think he’s repulsive and I hate him” he said calmly.

Not one to have knee-jerk reactions, I promptly pulled over and said, “Okay, we’re going home”.

Then I thought it might be better to continue on and try to get to the bottom of this, to delve into the mind of a teenager. After all, I was a kid once, and many of my peers believe I still have that mentality.

“So explain to me, son, what exactly does he do, to cause you to hate him?”  I ask.

“Well, he says the stupidest things and he follows me around and he touches my stuff and well, he’s just gross”.

“So what, you can pass gas and he can’t?”

At this point, I felt it was time to explain a few things and start the dialogue.  What a great bonding experience this will be!  Mano o mano, passing on my somewhat vast experience of life.  I started to explain how younger brothers look up to the older brother because the older brother has all the cool stuff and does all the cool things.  The weird questions and funny sounds and smells that come from the younger, are the same funny smells and sounds that come from you and you will get used to them – my darling wife and I had to. The younger brother may not seem human to the older at the moment, but he is and should treated as such.

 I was on such a roll!  All the things I did to my little brother started to jump to mind and it was somewhat cathartic to explain this all to my son.  He will become so much better as a human being after this!  This dialogue stuff may actually work!  I eagerly awaited his reaction.

“I still hate him”

So much for bonding. Time for another tack.

“You don’t hate anyone.  Hate is too strong a word for anything except evil people or evil situations. That you can hate. If you don’t watch out for your brother or your sister, I will drop on you like a ton of bricks.  Plus I will ground you for a week the first time I hear you bothering him for no reason, two weeks the next time”.

I love having several effective parenting techniques.  When one style doesn’t work, another always will. Come to think of it, it would be interesting to see if these techniques worked at work. Hmm…

Anyway, the trip continued and I was hoping that my little talk made an impact on son number one. There was a (hopefully) thoughtful silence coming from the passenger seat. “What exactly,” said my son, “do you mean by ‘bothering’ him?”

Yeesh.

“I shouldn’t have to explain it to you, you know what I mean” I said, using the time honoured method of deflecting the question. Besides, I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.

“You mean it could be anything I do?” he asked, “That’s not fair! What if you’re grumpy after work?”

“Exactly!” I said, “You’ll never see it coming, so be careful.”

I now know what a mulish look is – I was hoping I would be able to see a mule face on a human, I just didn’t think I would see it on a family member. Pretty neat. I’ll have to try it out on the other two kids, just to compare. I could make it a competition, with the winner getting to wash the car!

Stay tuned for the results…