Ten. It's the new thirteen.

My son.

*sigh*

He's enough to make a person reconsider having kids.

He's already spouting unfairness about his parents "getting whatever they want" (HA).

Oh, the demanding.  The attitude.  And, yes, the tantrums. 

He insists he follow what I said, say, 37 days ago, verses the new restriction I doled out 37 seconds ago (due to a decline in behavior on his part, but that doesn't count, apparently).  To change my mind in such a way makes me not only a promise breaker, but a liar.

Indeed.

He wants to be like other "normal kids".

*normal:  adjective:  To sit and play video games all day, every day.  To have a cell phone that is paid for by the parents.  To not have a reasonable bedtime.  To do whatever one wants, whenever one wants to do it.

I "pawn off" my chores on to him simply so I don't have to do them. 

I give him the opportunity to play my new XBOX 360 w/Kinect with me and he complains that he never gets to play by himself (on MY game system) and he never gets to choose what he gets to play (on MY game system) and he never gets enough time to play (on MY game system) and it's SO NOT FAIR.

He claims he's going to save up his money and buy his OWN game system so he can play it whenever he wants and I can't say a thing about it because it's HIS.  (He forgot about the part where he uses my TV, my electricity, in my house, but I'll let him dream.)

Yesterday, I decided to let him earn some alone time on MY game system.  A time when no one else gets to play with him and he gets to choose to play whatever he wants for a whole hour. 

In exchange, I get out of doing the dishes. 

So, he's looking forward to it all day yesterday and this morning, re-verifying that he gets to play alone for a whole hour, because "You said, Mom."

His time finally arrives.  A fight breaks out between two of my kids for reasons not worth mentioning, but it leaves his sister crying in the kitchen.  I go to shower, not wanting to deal with anything, anymore.  I come back down to find

they're playing together.

Hmm...

I fully expect my smart aleck son to inform me that this doesn't count against his "alone" time.

Instead, I inform him that it DOES count against it.

He says, "I know.  But she was in the kitchen, crying, so I let her come play with me."

I have to admit:  it doesn't take much for that kid to totally melt my heart and make me forget about how much he's like his stubborn, willful, unrelenting mother before she learned how to make that work for her.  ;)

Instead, I'm reminded of what he'll become and that I need to nourish that.