Parenting around the world

A couple of our friends invited us over for a cookout yesterday evening. They also invited their fairly new neighbors, who happen to be in the U.S. on a two-year work contract from England.

First of all, I'll just go ahead and admit that I hung on their every word, just because I loved their accents.

But what was more interesting that their accents was learning about some of their parenting processes.

They have two young children, and as is often the case, one of their children is a pickier eater than the other. I asked the mom how she handles that.

"We make what we make for everyone," she said. "She (their youngest child) often just picks at her meal, but we tell her at every meal that if she doesn't eat her meal, she doesn't get pudding."

I was thinking, "Do they have pudding after every meal?" But after listening to her talk about it for a minute, I realized that "pudding" encompasses all desserts. Then I remembered the line from the rock song, "If you don't eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?"

Then, as parents are wont to do, we started trading kid accomplishments. I told her that Biscuit counts to 27 now, but for some reason, 15 is nonexistent. He never says 15. Oddly enough, when their son was learning to count, he always skipped 15, too.

Then we talked about speech patterns. Their little girl, who is just a few months older than Biscuit, makes the "D" sound for the letter "G." So instead of a dog, she sees a dod.

So I told them about Biscuit swapping out "L" sounds for "W." As in, my firetruck has a wadder instead of a ladder.

I think the thing I most identified with was when they were getting ready to go, their two kids tried to sneak another chocolate-covered strawberry each. I can't blame them. They were delicious.

Their mom was saying goodbye to our host with her back to the kids. She didn't see what they were doing, so I called her name and pointed to the kids.

"No, no, no," she said. "You've each already had one of those." 

The little girl didn't seem too bothered, but the boy was not happy and started to get a little whiny.

The mom realized they had put their hands on the strawberries, so she grabbed a napkin and said, "Since you handled these, we'll take them home to have later."

Well, the boy took that to mean that as soon as they walked across the yard back to their house, they were going to get to eat those strawberries. But the mom broke his heart by telling him that they would put them in the fridge to have the next day.

"But the chocolate will melt. It will melt, and they won't be good anymore," the little boy whined.

But the mom stood strong.

"Listen, the sillier you act about this, the less likely your chances to eat these tomorrow," she said.

Whoa! The words were a little different, but I swear, that exact sentiment has come out of my mouth so many times with Biscuit.

I guess it all boils down to the fact that parenting is parenting, no matter where you come from.