Crazy Making

My 9-yr-old (filthy from camping) 

As a mother there is a certain quagmire that I try hard to avoid. My boys (11 & 9) suck me into these never ending arguments about certain priviledges or rights that I get so confused about I end up losing my edge. At this age they (esp. my 9-yr-old) are still young enough to not have a full grasp on the consequences of their actions. (Staying up WAY too late on a school night; eating WAY too much candy; or spending all day in front of a gaming device) But they are old enough to argue well and even present convincing (or is it confusing) evidence for their plight. Well it gets me anyway...until I am so confused that I give in. Okay it goes like this;

"Mom YOU said that I could __________ (fill in the blank)."

"No, I didn't say you could do that, what are you talking about?"

"You know last week, I was _________, and you looked right at me and didn't say anything so I figured it was okay." OR "Remember I asked you when you were on the phone with Grandma, and you nodded your head."

"Okay wait a minute, let me tell you something, you need to be sure you have my attention when you are asking me things like this. I did not say you could __________"

"But Mom, all this time I thought it was okay, and now you tell me it's not. You are so confusing." (notice the reverse psychology in effect here, what he is really trying to do is appeal to my sense of 'fairness' and get ME confused.)

**I am stumped for a moment and don't answer right away which is taken as the first sign of weakness...he plunges ahead.**

"Well, I had planned all day on the fact that I could ___________ and I was really looking forward to it. Can you just let me do it today?" (spoken plaintively)

**Again my sense of somehow bruising his psyche and causing him great pain later in life because of all of his crushing disappointments, bubbles to the surface, combined with anger at my sudden loss of reasonable thought.**

"Okay..."

"Thanks Mom." Bright smile. He begins to run off to do _________.

"No wait! I didn't mean 'okay, you could do it,' I meant okay lets talk about this."

"Ohhhhh," he slowly turns back, head down expression bleak.

And thus begins the swirling descent into 'reasoning' with a 9-year-old.
A descent from which I rarely ever emerge as the calm and mature grown-up who knows what's best for my child, but instead the wondering, frustrated parent who walks away wondering what hit me.

It's funny but as I have been watching snippets of the recent hearings for the last 2 vacancies on the supreme court I somehow get that same swirling effect. Half the time the questions have nothing to do with anything sane and are not doing service to anyone 'for real' but just to serve someone's pet agenda that they don't want to get tinkered with. I watched an angry senator ask Mr. Alito if the constitution protected the right to free speech, upon which Alito answered quickly and affirmatively. Then the senator proceeded to ask why Alito couldn't answer so decisively when the same question was asked of abortion.
"Does the constitution protect a woman's right to an abortion?"
Alito inhaled deeply and the senator shot in, lambasting him on his hesitancy.
But Alito was calm and collected as he said that one is clearly worded in the constitutin while the latter is based on an interpretation of what the constitution says. So in fact they are very different questions.

Does this have a correlation to you? I mean, think about it, the kid claiming that I said he could _______________ even though I wasn't even talking to him directly? And yet I allow myself to be confused by the wording and the plight of my son. Afraid to hurt his feelings or his sense of justice. Is this where it all begins? Watering down the truth about issues to avoid stepping on peoples toes? Believe it or not I learned a lesson from Mr. Alito yesterday. Don't be confrontational, don't react, just state the truth and move on. We don't need to hash this out. My son knows in his heart that he needs to ask. And if he honestly thought I said something that I didnt', well I have the right to set him straight and he should honor me in that too.