Who's the boss?

When Alden was three years old, he and I had a very serious discussion. He insisted at the time that he didn't have to do what he said because I wasn't his boss. Curious I asked him who was his boss, to which he told me that his dad is his boss. Girls, he told me, cannot be bosses. This, of course, did not set well with me, and I argued with him for an hour, and Michael set him straight when he arrived home from work that night. We discovered that Michael had not given Alden intentional male chauvinistic tendencies but that when referring to himself as the boss in Spanish, he used the male form jeffe rather than jeffa. We assumed that Alden assumed that there was no female form of boss and consequently that women couldn't be the boss. Both Michael and I assumed that we made it clear that both he and I are Alden's boss and that girls can in fact be the boss.

Fast forward three years later to today.....

Alden has been sick the past two days. He has a fever and a sore throat and seriously does not feel well, poor boy. He also has recently acquired a terrible obsession for our Wii. I've been trying to limit his playing time, but it is seriously all he wants to do. Yesterday he prayed that he could be sick today so that he could stay home and play the Wii. I decided at that point that Alden would not be able to play the Wii on the days that he stayed home from school. I don't want to punish him for being sick, but I also don't want to encourage him to be sick either. Alden has been slightly put off with me for the entire day. When Michael came home for lunch, we talked about my decision. Michael said, "Alden when you are a dad, will you let your kids play the Wii?"

"Yes, I definitely will," Alden responded.

Then I asked, "What if your wife tells your kids that they can't play the Wii?"

"I'll tell her, 'I believe I'm the boss around here,'" he stated resoundly.

Michael told me that he thinks Alden is going to have a tough first year of marriage.

I'm thinking that the lesson that we taught him when he was three needs to be reemphasized.