Momma's boys

I try really hard not to be judgmental about how my sister raises her kids. I don't know the first thing about doing her job except that I sure as hell couldn't do it. I also try not to make too many comparisons to how I myself was raised. It's tedious. Every time I see one of those self-congratulatory memes circulating about how we were the last generation of "real kids" who weren't hovered over, I wince and turn away. (Worse, I'm remind of Stewart Lee's line about how a whole generation "has confused 'political correctness' with basic health and safety".)

But some of her decisions just astonish me, and none more than her approach to cooking. Today she posted an announcement that her eldest, just shy of his 12th birthday, has finally learned to make his own instant mac'n'cheese. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? By the time I was twelve, I was making real mac'n'cheese from scratch (well, from box macaroni and Velveeta, which represent the convenience foods of the previous generation) for the entire family. I tried to remember how old I was when I was allowed to use the stove, and I can't say for sure except that it was a couple years after we moved back to St Louis. (I distinctly remember boiling hotdogs and frying pancakes--green for St Patrick's day! on the stove in the house on Dale.) I would've been about 8.

Still, the hardest thing to get over is how she is even now playing short-order cook at dinnertime. A couple years back, when they had the kitchen remodeled, she made an attempt to get them to eat all one meal, but seems to have caved almost immediately. (Whether it was because she wasn't willing to accept eating blandly in order not to have to play enforcer every night, I don't know.) I can well understand her not wanting to adopt the draconian eat-it-or-go-hungry tactics of our parents, but surely there must be a better way forward.

After all, they will probably visit again at some point and it would be nice to actually cook for them ourselves instead of having to order in pizza because the little fuckers lack the basic etiquette toaren't used to being asked to eat what's put in front of them.