Kids and arguments

2023-12-26

I just spent about an hour arguing with son Murgan.. He is 12.

He wants me to play football, I am tired.. So I say no. After like an hour of him asking and me saying no, he is like "what if I solve this Rubiks cube"? I know he has tried to learn it in the past and gave up.. So I said "sure. I will play if you solve it in the next 45 minutes" and I start a timer.

He is using a computer to do it and he tells me he is looking up an tutorial for solving it. So I said sure, its fine. I see that he is trying and getting frustrated with it. And then magically in the next 10 minutes he solves it.

I assumed his brother helped him, so I scrambled it again and asked him to solve it. He does it again with the computers help. So I kept my side of the bargain and go out to play. They are giggling and I suspected something and I asked them if they used an app/solver to do it. And sure enough, Murgan found an app which gives you the exact steps to solve the cube if you input one face into it.

At that point, I refused to play well and I dragged my feet. So we came back inside and I spent the next hour arguing with him. He thinks that what he did it fair and square. I pointed out that I expect fairness and honesty from him and he said that I should have said so in the initial instructions.. We go back and forth about this for an hour.

I was genuinely upset that he was arguing that I had to spell it out that I expected honesty and fairness from him. Otherwise, it was fair game for him to scam and cheat me. He then began arguing that scamming and cheating were two different things.. At which point I stopped engaging him.

I don't know what to say.. Kids!

(the names of these sweet angels have been changed to protect them!)