mother made some pancakes for Billy
about the dragon ate them all mother
made some more but the dragon ate those
too
mother kept making pancakes until she
ran out of batter Billy only got one of
them but he said that's all he really
wanted anyway so I'll tell you another
story about that so when I lived in
Boston I had little kids and my wife
took care of some neighborhood little
kids because she didn't have a green
card and that was she was home with the
kids anyways and anyway she took care of
some other little kids one of them would
only eat hot dogs that was quite funny
he'd only eat hot dogs at his mother's
place but at our house he had all of his
lunch and he was perfectly happy about
it so I thought that was quite amusing
too but anyways one day a neighbor came
by and the neighbor had a four year old
child and the neighbor was looking for
someone to take care of the child
because her nanny had been in a car
accident and couldn't take care of the
child temporarily so the child had sort
of been circulating around neighborhood
houses for a couple of days and you know
people were taken care of and then he
ended up at our house and which was fine
and so he's a cute little guy and his
the mother came to the door and she said
she's you know pushed the boy in he was
kind of like this he wasn't very happy
and she said he probably won't eat all
day but that's okay and I thought hmm
that's rich that's a remarkably
interesting statement too you know to
put forth as a proposition the first
time we meet your son it's like he won't
eat all day which by the way is not okay
it's not okay and you're going to tell
us that it's okay and you're going to
expect that we're just going to accept
the fact that you think it's okay and
that's that's the whole story you
deliver all that information in one
little sentence so I thought well that's
pretty damn peculiar I believe she was a
psychologist too which was quite
interesting so okay so that's fine so I
went out to do something and there was
four kids playing in the house and when
I came back the little guy was in the
porch like where the boots were at
everything and he was sort of standing
there like
this and I thought hmm that's not good
because there's all these other kids
like he should have been in there
playing a that obviously that that's
what a child is primed to do he should
have been in there messing about with I
think there was a two-year-old a
three-year-old in another four year old
he should have been in there you know
causing trouble and having fun and
playing but he wasn't he was standing in
the porch like this and he wasn't happy
he wasn't happy so I looked at him for a
bit and then I poked him a couple of
times because I thought you know if
you're interacting with little kids
they're very playful they they're kind
of like puppies and so if you if you
tease them a bit and tickle them a bit
then usually even if they're crabby you
know a smile a breakout despite their
best efforts and then they'll sort of
giggle and maybe you know they'll try to
whack you away and they you know they
they go into a play routine and although
you may not know it mammals like us have
a play circuit and also so we're
intrinsically playful which is partly
why we can get along with dogs because
of course dogs are intrinsically playful
and most people know how to play with
the dog and you know when a dog wants to
play right because it sort of puts its
paws down and looks up at you and sort
of grins and puts its tail in the air
and goes like this it's like clue in
primate you know it's it's time to
engage in some playing and you know you
basically you know how to do that and
even the dog knows how to do that so I'm
poking this kid and trying to get him to
smile but there's no damn way
you know I'm poking him he's just
ignoring me like mad and I thought
that's not good you know because you
don't want your four-year-old to have
learned that you should you should that
it's okay to ignore adults or that you
should ignore adults or that you can
ignore adults that's all bad because the
world's full of adults and they know a
lot of things and they control all the
resources and so you better get along
with them plus you're going to end up as
an adult for most of your life so it's
the general you know if the first rule
is adults can and should be ignored
then what the hell are you headed for
you know and it's one of the reasons
that it's really useful to make sure the
children respect adults because they're
going to be adults so if they don't
respect adults then of course they don't
have any respect for what they're gonna
be why the hell grow up you end up like
Peter Pan
because that's what Peter Pan's about
right Peter Pan wants to stay in
Neverland with the Lost Boys where where
there's no responsibility because you
know he looks at the future and all he
sees is Captain Hook a tyrant who's
afraid of death
that's the crocodile right that's
chasing him with the clock in his
stomach that's the same thing as this
dragon so you know kids have to respect
adults since you're doing them a
disservice if they don't so okay so fine
I'm poking this kid there's just no damn
way I'm not getting anywhere with them
and I thought this isn't good there's
something deeply wrong with this little
kid so that's fine so then we said all
the kids down for lunch and the rule is
your damn lunch and be thankful for it
because you think about this Leonard
Cohen wrote this song once about I don't
remember the song particularly but he
talked about the homicidal bitching that
goes down in every kitchen about who's
going to serve and who's going to eat
it's like if you haven't encountered
that then there's something terribly
wrong you know so because a lot of the
tension in households is domestic
tension the tension between husbands and
wives say or husbands wives and children
it's like just who the hell is gonna do
the domestic duties and how and when and
the answer can't be well we're not going
to do them because then you know you eat
Cheetos and popcorn and you know for the
rest of your life and that's not good
it's got to the point in in England
because the domestic situations have
deteriorated the rituals have
deteriorated to such a point that about
1/3 of families no longer have a
dining-room table and you can buy
precooked hard-boiled eggs yeah yeah
right you know it's not a good thing and
you might ask yourself why the hell
everyone is either fat or has an eating
disorder and you know part of the reason
is is that the entire domestic routine
around regulating food intake has
disappeared that's a terrible thing for
people because we're social eaters so
you might say well if you sit down with
a bunch of other people at a table how
much should you eat and the answer is
you should eat on average what everyone
else eats and that's exactly what you do
even if you don't notice it you know
people are so wired into we did
experiments like this if you if you
bring on if you bring undergraduates who
don't know each other in to allow
and you give them a snack while they're
doing something like watching a movie
they will eat the same number of chips
so you know if one of them eats the
whole half the thing the other world eat
half if one only has one the other only
have one the correlation between the
food intake between the dyads was about
0.8 it was staggering seem to be a
little higher for extroverts than for
introverts but it was remarkably
remarkably concordant you can understand
why right because human beings share
food it's like you are not going to be a
popular tribes person if you eat you
know 30 percent of the food when food is
in short supply
you better be bloody awake and make sure
that you don't take more than your share
and you know it's a fundamental element
of human nature to do that and you know
and we also regulate our sense of
satiety by queues that are external to
us so regulating our food intake also
because we're omnivores turns out to be
a tremendously difficult thing and well
anyways back to this kid so we bring all
the kids to the table and they're
sitting around and they're having lunch
and the rule is as I said eat what is in
front of you and be pleased and happy
about it so you might say well why would
that also be a rule it's like okay put
yourself in this position now because
you'll be in this position you're gonna
cook your damn kids some lunch and
you're gonna do that well let's let's
calculate it out because I like doing
arithmetic so let's say it takes you
half an hour a day and you do it seven
days a week but we'll multiply that by
three because there's three meals so
it's an hour and a half a day right so
okay fine seven times an hour and a half
is roughly 10 so it's ten hours a week
it's 40 hours a month right 40 hours a
month is a full work week so 40 hours a
month times twelve twelve full work
weeks right
yes that's three full months of 40 hour
days of cooking something for your damn
kid now that's a lot of time and then
you're gonna do that for 18 years so
then you might ask yourself what sort of
response do you need from your child in
order to not feel resentful and
miserable about the fact that you have
to do that for three bloody months this
year you just have to think about this
this is a
so why it's necessary to know that
inside yourself you carry a monster just
like the world outside you carries a
monster do not think that you're going
to be able to maintain a healthy
attitude towards your child or towards
food or towards yourself if all you can
muster up for the effort of cooking and
preparing food is the attitude of a
slave and continual punishment from the
people that you're offering food to it's
like who the hell wants that so you want
to teach the miserable little blader
that he's lucky that there's any food
there at all and that the proper
attitude is to say really thank you very
much mom or thank you very much dad I'm
glad that you produce something and then
you know you can be all happy about the
fact that you were you know slaving away
in the kitchen and you can like your kid
so and you know you might think well
everybody likes their kids it's like
yeah right no that's not true that's not
true and now and then you know you read
in the newspaper about someone who's you
know being pushed a little bit too far
on some day that they're unemployed and
hungover and you know the relationship
is just broken up and they do something
absolutely brutal to their child if you
think well how could anyone do that it's
like there's a lot of history of
terrible interactions between the mother
and the child or the father and the
child before something like that happens
so you know if you want to protect your
child against the beast that's inside
you you might want to teach them to
treat you with some respect so that
you're much more likely to be a
civilized human being around them so all
right so anyway so this kids sitting
there and there's no damn way he's gonna
eat anything Hey so we decide we're
going to feed him which I'm an expert at
because my son the one who said no all
the time he is the most stubborn little
cuss you could possibly imagine and one
time when he was about nine months old
he got ahold of the spoon and it was
like he was not gonna be fed anymore hey
so that's fine good you know it's like
feed yourself but no kids a they're too
damn curious and playful really to feed
themselves so you sit them in a
highchair and then you know they fling
the food onto the floor cuz that's
pretty cool they can watch that over and
over you know where they mess around
with it or maybe they you know put some
in mom's hair because that's interesting
to it they have two or three bites and
then they're not ravenous and then
they're much more interested in playing
and that's fine except that if the kid
doesn't need then it gets crabby and you
whiney and miserable and then it
disturbs the mother or the father and
then it won't sleep at night it's like
that's no good so after about three days
of that I took the spoon back from him
and he was not happy about that man
trying to get that little kid to eat
once I got the spoon it was like a
four-hour battle it was really
remarkable so I'd love respect for his
ability just to withstand stubbornness
you know but I'd learned by that time as
a parent that like if you want to
discipline your child you there's an
attitude you have to take which is I am
going to win this like I don't care how
stubborn you are I am going to win and
because I know I'm going to win I'm not
going to get angry I'm just gonna out
stubborn you and so so I take up some
food and put it in front of him II go
like this so that was a good trick and
so I try to get the food in there and
his teeth regretted so I poke him you
know poke poke poke poke and after about
10 pokes he'd get annoyed and go and I
put the food in and then he tried to
spit it out so I'd hold in the end in
this so then so that was like three
minutes you know and then we did it with
another spoonful and you know after
about I'd say an hour of this my wife
had to leave because it was like she
just couldn't handle it and about an
hour after this he decided that you know
it was okay and that he would let me
feed him but like it was brutal and and
it was amazing I mean little kids are so
damn tough you know they're really cute
and everything and but they're so tough
you just can't believe it so anyways so
we had this kid at the table and he was
not gonna eat so my wife who'd learned
these tricks by this time decided to
feed him and he had a lot of sort of
nine month old or eight month old
behaviors because you know kids have
different strategies of resistance if
they don't want to do something and
those strategies get more sophisticated
as they get older but and he had some
strategies but they weren't
sophisticated you know like he didn't
make jokes or knock the spoon away or or
get angry or or run away or any of those
things he did kind of nine-month-old
things which means he just put his head
down and when she put the spoon towards
him he just averted his head one way or
another so so that was interesting
because I knew that his parents had
given up feeding him when he was about
eight or nine months so
because those tricks worked and so
that's why she could come to the house
and say he probably won't eat all day
but that's alright which it isn't it's
not alright so fine so my wife is trying
to feed him and he doesn't open his
mouth so she pokes from a bit and sooner
or later he gets mad and Beautiful's and
she puts the food in and she died and
then she Pat's him on the head as soon
as he swallows it and says look you're
being a really good kid you know you're
doing a good job and then so he's
wondering what the hell's going on and
then it was so interesting because she
kept feeding him and he was still doing
this but as she patted him on the head
he'd be doing this and he'd opened his
mouth so it was like there was this
weird conflict between his habitual
behavior and this thing that was being
reinforced so then she you know put the
food in and pat him and he'd you know
he'd be kind of happy about that and
then he'd go back to his routine and
then she did that for I think about 20
minutes it wasn't disruptive like all
the other kids ate they didn't even
really notice what was going on it
wasn't it wasn't a big deal you know but
I was watching because I knew something
was up because the stupid thing that his
mother said and then the fact that he
wouldn't play and he ignored me I
thought nah nah there's something really
not good here there's dragon here and
it's a big one
so she feeds him and then he finishes
the whole ball it's like and she says
you're a good boy you ate the whole ball
and Jesus you should have seen what
happened to that kid man it just about
broke my heart like really like his eyes
got big and he smiled and he was just
like he was super thrilled because he'd
finally accomplished this absolute basic
necessity that he hadn't mastered in
four years he finally got it right you
think of all the meals that he went
through either being ignored or failing
three times a day for like three years
nothing but failure and bad responses
and you know he didn't turn alized all
that he thought he was a bad kid and
then all of a sudden poof he figured
this out and you know get a little
reward for it was like he just lit up
and that whole shell that he had on that
that he was like using to protect
himself when he was in the porch that
just melted away it was like it was
horrifying and amazing at the same time
and that he followed my wife around
after that in the house just like a
puppy dog like he wouldn't get he would
not get more than one foot away for
her it was unbelievable and then we went
downstairs to watch like a movie with
the kids and she sat on a rocking chair
he climbed right up on her lap and
grabbed her just like that Harlow monkey
grabbed the you know the little soft
mother instead of the wiry mother who he
was like this and he was like that for
like two hours he wouldn't let her go so
then the mother came home his mother
came home and she came downstairs and
she looked at what was going on you know
and this kid was like oh I'm dawn to my
wife and she looked at her and she said
oh super mom and you know took her kid
and went home it's like Jesus like if
you don't think there's a dragon in that
story man you're not listening to it it
was not good and her response at the end
was terrible she should have said well
how'd you get him to eat it's like and
what what the hell is he doing like
hugging you he never does that to me no
way man she was gonna let that piece of
information in and it's no wonder
because the dragon in that story was her
and it was something she did not want to
admit and she was willing perfectly
willing to sacrifice her child to that
to her failure to realize that she could
be a dragon so that meant that the child
was the problem and that's a hell of a
thing to do to a four-year-old so it was
not pleasant it was really not pleasant
in fact we probably did damage to the
child by actually getting him to do
something good because we opened up him
up to the possibility that he could
behave properly and be rewarded for that
and that gave him hope and so you can
bloody well be sure that that hope was
dispensed with the next day so and
that's why Billy doesn't get anything to
eat