I’ve been interviewing in work this week. Reading CV’s can be more entertaining than most of the recreational reading I do. It’s one of my favourite games to interpret a CV and try and figure out the hidden meanings between the lines. It’s even more fun when it is an internal position and you know the background to the embellishments. One of the things that amused me most is that some of the people list influencing others as a skill. To me, that implies that it is something that was learned and worked on but my recent experiences suggest that it is something innate that maybe we need to be reminded of when we get older.
Since the moment they were born, the boys took one look at me, measured me and figured out exactly how to manipulate me. Maybe it’s not as calculated as the influencing skill of the adult world but from day one they knew that a well pitched cry would bring me running and a smile would leave me as putty in their tiny hands.
They used to use their “skills” for mostly “good” purposes, getting fed, changed or getting someone to play with them. Now they just enjoy using their skills for “evil”. They don’t fight physically as much as they used to but there is a constant undercurrent of competition between them and the battles of wills wages on. It manifests itself in a thousand different ways, Monkey Boy refusing to eat his food and then performing a complete U-turn when we offer the same spoon to Fat Chops. Climbing over each other to get closest to their mother on weekend mornings is a regular event. It’s hilarious that they will clamber over their brother or be clambered upon with not as much as a moan as long as they reach their goal. But if Fat Chops foot should “accidentally” tip off his brother’s foot when they are drinking their bottles then we will have to run into the neighbours and ask them not to ring the police and explain that the screaming was just an eruption of sibling rivalry and not a case of child cruelty.
Last night the boys got into a spat over a toy just before dinnertime. Myself and Hannah managed to break it up just as they were starting to pull hair and bare teeth. She took a protesting Monkey Boy off to his high chair and I was left to take the toy from Fat Chops and bring him through. I braced myself for the inevitable protests when he was carried off but all I got was indifference. The battle was over, Fat Chops was last to hold the toy and besides, he was hungry so it was time to move on.
The quest for any slight upper hand is constant and goes both ways. A couple of days ago, Monkey Boy came looking for food yet again [they graze non stop these days, it’s ridiculous]. I gave him two biscuits and asked him to give one to Fat Chops. It’s not an untried routine and there normally aren’t any problems with it. Shortly afterwards, I noticed that he still had a biscuit in each hand albeit one of them was half eaten. I reminded him that one of the biscuits was for his brother and being the obedient child that he is, he obliged and handed Fat Chops a biscuit. The half-eaten one! I think he has been taking lessons from his cousin, Skittles.
That’s not even the worst of it. We had a spell a couple of months ago where, shortly after being put to bed, Monkey Boy would start screaming. Not the usual I-don’t-want-to-go-to-bed-yet scream but a more distressed cry. This went on for over a week and we were really struggling to understand what was causing it. There had never been a problem settling them down before and nothing in the routine had changed. After a couple of nights, Hannah waited outside the door after settling him down. A few minutes after she left the room she heard Fat Chops saying “Bold!” [or the badly pronounced equivalent that he was using at the time]. She crept around the door and saw him standing up in the bed, pointing at his brother and shouting “bold!” while Monkey Boy wailed. I can only assume that this had been going on the whole time as soon we had left the room.
My own personal favourite is the double bluff. Monkey Boy is the more sympathetic of the two and should his brother be upset he will often go over and console him by putting an arm around his shoulders or patting his head. Should that consolation irritate his brother [it always does] then the answer is obviously that more consolation is required. He manages to maintain the purest of innocent looks while he is doing this and sometimes even produces a quizzical, hurt look as if to ask, “Why is he pushing me away when all I want to do is hug him?” If you didn’t know any better you could be fooled into thinking how sweet he was being!
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