Leftovers

Dear Ian,

This evening, we ordered a salmon/ chicken bento set for your dinner. You ate your fill and you wanted me to finish off the rest. There was a piece of chicken left and you wanted to eat that up first before passing your rice to me.

And I asked you, ‘You want your father to eat plain rice?’

To which you rationalized, ‘No’, you are going to leave the soup for me as well. In fact you are going to put some soup into the rice so that I can have the soup and the rice.

I was a little sad and disappointed.

Technically you are going to leave me with a porridge, while you eat up all the salmon and chicken, albeit the last piece, after you said that you are too full to finish everything. So you finished the best of everything and leave your dad soup and rice. Have we ever only given you soup and rice?

I raised to you the issues of morals. We do not want to raise kids that has the best of everything and leave the least of everything for other people. More importantly, I do not want you and your brother to pick this habit up and do it to your grandparents. They will eat everything you boys cannot finish and they will not say a word about it, this is because they both love you in their own special way.

So I have to put a foot to it. While I certainly do not mind eating only rice and soup, but I need you to understand, you cannot treat people like this, this is plain selfish, me, me, me, mentality. You cannot take the best and give others the least. We do not do that to you, please don’t do it to us, please don;t do this to others.

You are going to get the best the world can ever provide, but what are you going to give back in return? You will always get the best resources. we will never give you leftovers, if we can help it. We will always think in your best interests, any decent parents would do that for their children, we just need you to understand that you have to, give back, a decent level of respect to your elders. to your grandparents, to those around you. you cannot take all that is good for yourself and leave whatever is left for others. This is not how we want to bring you up.

_{First posted Mar 29, 2015}