We are at an impasse. My son stares me down over a plate of Mexican rice. He is an immovable object for whom my dinner is clearly not an irresistible force.
Had you entered our kitchen 20 minutes ago, you would have thought us a harmonious pair. We have an admittedly – possibly even revoltingly – cutesy poster framed beside the door which declares This Kitchen Is For Dancing, and he has always taken it quite literally. Today, we were sweating up a storm to our perennial favourite, 1nce Again by Client_03, an anonymous musician whose mix of menacing electro and garbled computer voices has proven an unlikely hit with my four-year-old. My ulterior motive is to wear him down, so he can’t put up a struggle when dinnertime arrives. It has not worked, and now he’s just sweaty while he stares at me.
I am not a picky eater myself and never was. I would go so far as to say that my childhood appetites were almost worryingly undiscerning. My attitude to food has always been, basically, ‘Yes!’ It would be easy to say this was because I grew up with 10 siblings, but there were picky eaters among us.
By the time he was three, my little brother Conall’s pickiness had become so pronounced that my father made him sit by his side for meals, with no one allowed to leave until he’d finished. As such, he bore not just the pressure of his father, but his 10 siblings, loudly willing him to eat so they could get on with their lives. I don’t remember him ever relenting. The only proof he ever did is that I now live in London, which means I must have been released from that table eventually.
It seems my son takes after his uncle and I’m a poor match. I am not a stubborn person. Barring cold-water swimming or paying for YouTube, I can be talked into anything. I’d like to think this is due to some deep-seated agreeableness in my character, but it is more likely a function of sheer laziness. Sure, I can’t be arsed to go to that gig you keep recommending, but I really can’t be arsed arguing with you about it. Let’s go and have a terrible time together. I will learn nothing and probably do it again.
So, I play good cop and bad cop. I use my hardest fatherly stare and then remind my son of all the wonderful things he can do once he leaves this table, if he eats just three more spoonfuls. Tiny advances are made on the chessboard. I halve the amount of food in the catchment zone. I wear him down to eating just the rice and carrots, leaving the peas and chicken pieces for another day. He groans, weeps and announces he is now too tired to eat.
‘Too tired to lift your fork?’ I ask. ‘Yes,’ he confirms, sadly, and I tell him that we can knock the dancing on the head from now on, since I had no idea it was affecting him so. He looks at me with horror and finally raises his spoon as if it’s loaded with poison. This kitchen may be for dancing, I say, but eating is occasionally necessary.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
