Kids and manners

Over the weekend we had a gang of old friends visit us, families in tow, for dinner. Most of them have one kids if not two so the house was a wild melee of assorted agegroups chattering together.

One of the couples - he and I went to business school together and his wife and I have been friendly since day one - has two daughters, age 10 and 7. The older one, when she was born and till quite a few years later, looked just like a doll. She was quiet and shy and used to cling to her mom. Well, now she's all growed up at 10 years old, and I regret to say A and I disliked her.

She's become a chubby little kid, and has the most belligerent expression on her face at all times, as if she's just waiting to pick a fight with someone. The scowl rarely leaves her face, and she's not all that good at greeting people when she walks into their home. And her expression is both unpleasant and not very intelligent.

Since kids were coming over, and it's a houserule in any case, we had some healthy snacks around, like masala paneer, and lots of fruit juice. "Where are the chips? Where is the coke?" this girl asked my maid, and quite rudely at that, and made a face when told we didn't have either. Then she somehow spotted an unopened box of butter cookies which was lying in a closed cupboard ( I wasn't in the kitchen at the time so dunno how she did it) and promptly demanded and devoured four of them by herself and asked for more! This isn't the first time I've seen her demonstrate a penchant for being 'grabby' about food either - even during other visits, she has pounced on food and drink and demanded things that weren't being served.

Then later, A was putting on a movie for all the kids since we figured that would be one thing that would unite the motley crew. We had a carefully edited selection of movies - Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Swiss Family Robinson or the Ice age/ Finding Nemo variety. To every single suggestion that was put forth by anybody, this girl replied with a rude negative. Poor Chubbocks kept trying to voice his choices but there were too many kids older than him and we'd explained that he had to let the guests choose, so he stayed quiet in the background.

Finally, one of the other mothers made the rule that two movies would be watched, each for 45 minutes, as the only way to settle the argument. Even during the time that the kids were watching the movie, when A poked his head in to find out how they were doing or if the CD had finished, he was met by rude replies from this girl. She didn;t mix with any of the other kids, didn;t bother saying a 'hi' or 'Hello' - and this when she knew many of them already - and didn;t end up interacting with anyone except her own sister. Later, when everyone was having food, this girl comes rushing up to me demanding a piece of dessert - not asking politely, but demanding. No Thank you's, no pleases, no pleasantness - it really left a bad taste in our mouths.

I really had to wonder where all this aggression and belligerency was coming from. Her parents are both quite strict whenever I've seen them, and are soft-spoken people themselves. They are both well-educated, well-mannered people. I could just imagine this girl bullying the maids at home when the parents weren't around. Her sister on the other hand is well-mannered and soft spoken, so I have to hope it's just a phase, but it leaves me wondering what her parents are doing about it - are they perhaps not aware of it, or they do deal with it on their own turf but don't want to start a battle with their kid in someone else's house?

The other thing I wondered was whether perhaps the parents were really strict with her diet at home and so she was greedy when they went out, and whether the anger was some kind of pre-teen thing she was going through ( my niece - husband's cousin's daughter has that going on, and she is a 'Goth' at school in the US - dresses in all black weird clothes and scares the bejabbers out of us).

Later that weekend we were chatting with a friend who said once their daughter's school had called them up to say their daughter was very greedy - that other kids would be on their second slice of pizza and this kid would have wolfed down four. The parents then figured out that because they were very strict about junk food at home, whenever their daughter saw an opportunity when the parents weren't around, it became a huge attraction for her.

Many questions are racing through my mind including our own rather strict lines of appropriate behaviour and particularly stingy doling out of junk food...

So...right now giving the girl the benefit of the doubt but still not appreciatting her sulky and rude manner.

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We had been gorging on the leftover party food for two days, since I and A are the kinds who panic and overestimate instead of getting it right, and yesterday I got the best compliment of my life from Chubbocks.

"Mama, you cook just like a chef!"

Me ( nonplussed): "What's a chef?"

C: "A Master of Cooking."

Me: Big beam from ear to ear!!!