Ten Geeky Ways to Respond to Your Begging Child

It happens. Your kid gets in a snarky, whiny mood and you are stuck in the car listening to endless complaints and begging. For a brief moment you briefly recall why it is you had kids in the first place and in the next you try to figure out if you could, in fact, not get caught but dismiss both in the same moment. You love being a mother and murder is never the answer. Still the whining from the backseat continues.

Parenting 101 tells you not to give in once you’ve put your foot down and said no. Giving in is bad. But the kids haven’t read that book yet. That would yield them entirely too many trade secrets. So they keep asking, begging, whining, grating…

Be it sarcasm, a good sense of humor, impatience, or the occasional urge to embarass my kid, I occasionally say things out of the blue just to elicit a reaction. Normally it stops the begging as well. Win-Win! So here’s my top ten geeky ways to respond to my begging child.

10. Help me, Obi-Won Ka-Whiny. You’re my only hope.

9. Do you know what happened to the last child that begged me? He was kidnapped by the Borg.

8. Every time you beg, a programmer loses a line of code.

7. Cruciatus! Dang it, it worked on the cat! Practice makes perfect.

6. Reverse begging: You design and build me a mom-bot, and SHE can take/give you whatever you are whining about.

5. So last night I was playing with the PS3 and found the password set. I’ve forgotten what I put it as though. Something about silence, golden, bribes. Eh, it’ll come to me.

4. Oh my goodness! That was the forty-second time you’ve asked me that! It all makes sense, now. It’s amazing, this clarity. Oh, that was 43, now you’ve ruined it.

3. Yes, I’ll take you there on the Frabjous Day. You kill yourself a Jabberwocky and we’ll call it even. Caloo, calay!

2. I’m sorry but the number of syllables in that request is not in the Fibonacci series. Your request is denied.

1. Because I said so. (I don’t care if you are Geek or not, this one is golden and we went through childbirth. We earned our right to this one, thank you.)

Happy Geeking!