Yet another installment of Things Mal Said

My sister texted me yesterday as she was watching "Shiny Happy People," a docuseries about the Duggars  specifically and the IBLP more broadly. Although we didn't choose to homeschool because of the reason a lot of super conservative Christians did, I was certainly adjacent to the Quiverfull movement and swam in the waters of top-down authority (like God, Father, Mother, kids; or God, male church leadership, female church leadership, members, etc.). And although I might have paid lip service to authoritarianism both as a parent and within the patriarchy, I always chafed against it and was pretty bad at submitting myself to basically anyone.

In honor of this most recent exposure of Bill Gothard and this whole establishment (I'm not linking because, honestly, let's not give them any more eyeballs), I wanted to share two things that Mal said this weekend that these people would consider a failure due to my parenting. Have I ever been more proud? It's hard to say.

Friday, we were at Urban Air with some friends. The kids pick a table where they can enjoy snacks and hanging out when they're taking a break, and the parents sit together at a different table. Mal had been jumping and come back with one of his friends for a drink. An 11-year-old girl was sitting where Mal had been sitting earlier, and he asked her if she could get up so he could sit down. She moved to a different table alone, and he just plopped down at the edge of the booth. 

I said, "Mal, will you scoot over so that Abby can sit back down?" He just looked at me like I'd asked him to stab himself, and turned back around. I said, "Malcolm, you need to move over so Abby can have her seat back." Mal announced, "Mom, I'm not listening to you." I said, "Hopefully you'll start listening to me soon or you're not going to have any friends because you're being a jerk." He said, "Mom, I've listened to you my whole life, and today I'm just not going to do it."

After he left, the mom of the girl he had asked to move said, "I know it's not funny, but it's also so funny."

The next day, we went to see Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (so good!) and at one point, I thought I saw something fly in the air in front of the screen. A couple of minutes later, I noticed it again and it was just a moment after Mal had gotten a piece of popcorn. I realized he was eating around the kernel then just tossing the kernel into the row in front of us (where someone was sitting!) I said, “Mal, you can’t throw stuff like that.” He looked at me pointedly and said, “You’re not supposed to talk during a movie.” I said, “DO NOT THROW ANYTHING over there. If you have a kernel, just drop it in the floor and they’ll sweep it up after. Okay?” He just blinked and said, “You. Are. Not. Supposed to talk during the movie.”

I'm almost certain that I would have gotten a spanking for responding either way to my parents when I was Mal's age. It just never would have occurred to me. And I guess some people might say he's being disrespectful and shouldn't talk to me like that. But for me, the problem behaviors were the ones I was addressing, and I don't want to take focus from those by insisting on a perfect response to me, at the expense of having him think about what I was actually telling him. In the case of the movie, anyway, he didn't throw any more popcorn. 

Plus, I don't always respond to people in a completely measured way, and I don't actually have a problem with his being frustrated with me and expressing it. So I guess I'm failing as a mom, but it feels right. I'm going to keep doing it.