Dinner Battles

Michael pinched the bridge of his nose and stifled his frustrated groan against his hand. “Robbie,” he said finally, pulling back to sign. “Just three bites. Just three. Then you can go play.”

The boy clapped both hands over his mouth and kept them there, shaking his head. Robbie frowned so fiercely his eyes nearly disappeared beneath his brows. Still sulking, he refused to sign, but at this point it wasn’t necessary.

Michael made a frustrated whimper in the back of his throat. His impulse was to run a hand into his hair and tug, but they were all learning to cut back on superfluous gestures in case Robbie ended up attributing meaning to them by accident. “Please?” Michael asked, circling his heart with his open hand. “You have to eat, or Daddy’s going to get mad at me.”

Robbie made the sign for ‘yuck’, then repeated it several times – ‘throw up’. He punctuated his opinion by slapping both palms down on his high chair tray and shoving away the bowl in front of him.

“Stop being such a drama queen.” Michael sighed, though he didn’t bother signing that. “It’s just squash. Squash won’t make you throw up, and it’s good for you. You can’t just eat candy all day.” What he signed was, ‘eat’, ‘play’, ‘after’.

Robbie stared at him a minute, scowling, then formed his fingers into the mishmash they’d come to recognize as the fingersign for M and tapped it against his forehead. ‘Michael-Daddy’. Almost before Michael had registered that, he brought his hand to his mouth and drove it away, quickly.

Michael’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “Bad Daddy?” he repeated incredulously. “I’m a bad father because I feed you squash?” He repeated the sign, questioningly; Robbie said it back, with emphasis. “Arrrgh!” There was no sign for that, of course. Michael let his facial expression speak for itself. “You’re not getting down until you eat,” he insisted. “I’m not reinforcing bad behaviour by rewarding it.”

The showdown lasted several more minutes, during which Michael attempted to force a bite and Robbie pretended to acquiesce only to spit it out and let it dribble down his front.

By the time the front door slammed, Michael was almost ready to cry. “I need your baby-raising expertise,” he called out, “ i Your child /i doesn’t want to eat his squash.”

“Hello to you too and my day was just fine, thanks for asking,” Paul said airily, breezing into the kitchen. He dropped his bags with a thump and bent to give Michael a quick kiss. “I like how he’s ‘my child’ today. What’s he doing?”

“He won’t eat,” Michael complained, pushing back his chair and flinging up his hands. He swore Robbie’s expression was vindictively triumphant. “I’ve tried everything. Let’s just buy a baby IV or something so we don’t have to go through this.”

“What?” Paul pulled up his chair beside Michael’s and took the spoon from him, signing and exaggerating a pout. “Of course he’s going to eat, because he’s a good, smart boy and he wants to be strong. Right, Robbie?”

Robbie eyed Paul, then his gaze flicked to Michael and he opened his mouth.

“Good boy,” Paul smiled, and fed him. “You just caught him in one of his moods, Michael.”

When Robbie made the ‘Daddy’ sign with the P-hand followed by an enthusiastic rendition of the sign for ‘good’, Michael stuck out his tongue and stomped out of the kitchen.

“Really!” he heard Paul say, voice laden with amusement. “Who’s the infant here?”