JONATHAN AND AUTHORITY

JONATHAN AND AUTHORITY

My son Jonathan was never one to be intimidated by authority. He was born that way. I remember how, just a few days after he was born, his Dad said to me, “We have to be careful not to squelch his little psyche.” Well, not to worry. This kid’s psyche was unsquelchable, or at least that’s what he’d have you think. His Grandma Camp and I often reminisce, in something like amazement, that while he was still young enough and small enough to sleep in a bassinet, he would awake from a nap and begin shaking his little fist in the air, just visible over the edge of the bassinet. If you hopped up immediately, and saw to it that his diapers were changed or he was nursed or cuddled, life was good. But woe to the Mom who delayed just a bit. She would get the full treatment—screaming, kicking, inconsolable baby.

So I was trained early to try to pacify Jonathan, anticipate his wants, and let him have them, within reason. It was the “within reason” that caused the subsequent problems. Jonathan was so verbal, so early, that it always seemed to me that I was dealing with someone of considerable maturity. So I would try to reason with Jonathan, always to no avail. Once Jonathan thought of something he wanted—Cheerios, applesauce, a scooter, roller skates, a videotape player, to stay over at a friend’s house, a car, spring break at Myrtle Beach---he never backed down. No amount of “no’s”, said in a million different ways ever deterred him from his quest. This would often lead to situations where, I’m embarrassed and ashamed to admit, I would wind up trying to squelch his little psyche. Once when Jonathan was in “the terrible two’s”, he and I were in the kitchen, having one of our typical “discussions.” His Dad walked in on us, assessed the situation and asked, “Who’s the two year old here?”

Things did not improve much as the years went by. When Jonathan was 6, he once said to me something which perfectly encapsulates what I am trying to describe here. After yet another one of our “discussions” where I was unsuccessfully trying to “reason” with the boy, he said, “Mom, I don’t know why you think you can boss me around the way you do.”

Just a few years later, Jonathan and his buddy Benjamin were spending a Saturday together at Benjamin’s house. In midafternoon they decided it would be great to also spend the night together. This would entail getting both Benjamin’s mom and me to agree to the arrangement. A bit later, Benjamin’s dad asked them “Well, boys, got your plans worked out yet?” “Not yet,” they said, “we’re not finished with the begging, promising, and pleading.” Hard to squelch that level of sophistication.

For years I blamed my husband for this trait of Jonathan’s. He was the one with the fierce independent streak. But perhaps I contributed as well. When Jonathan was almost a teenager, he developed that smart-alack style of talking which my Father called “sassing your Mother” and which he (my father) did not allow. Jonathan and I were visiting my parents, and as luck would have it, he came out with a “smart-aleck” remark right in front of my mother. Mortified that she had heard her grandson say something “ugly” like “YOU DON”T KNOW, MOM” with that hint of a sneer, I said in desperation to my mother, “Was I ever like that?” “Well,” she said, “you did always know everything.”