I’ve seen it more than once, but this incident with the grackles was the picture-perfect account.
It was late spring. The mating had taken place, and the parents were rearing their children. I had been buzzed more than once for walking too close to a mockingbird’s nest (which, of course, I never did see). But the little ones were now starting to fly. They would accompany their parents on foraging exercises to learn how to take care of themselves outside the nest.
One day a female great-tailed grackle flew in and landed under a nearby tree. Immediately behind her was "Junior". Junior was nearly her size, fully feathered … and loud. He (I’m assuming "he" for the sake of pronoun differentiation) hopped about, squawking at his mother, mouth agape, waiting, no, demanding to be fed. She looked around the sparse ground, then leapt upward and was airborne. Junior watched her go, and stopped his noisemaking. There was, in fact, a thing or two to eat, so he picked at the plants and ground. But a moment later, mom returned, a prized soda cracker in her beak. Junior was at it again, squawking and hopping, mouth wide open. Mom started breaking off pieces of the cracker and putting them in his mouth. He willingly accepted, gulped it down, and demanded more. At one point, mom broke off a larger than usual piece, and it didn’t slide nicely into Junior’s mouth. He spit it out and squawked some more, demanding that she feed him bite-sized pieces, not these things that require some work (like chewing). Mom dutifully picked up the too-big piece, broke it down, and continued to feed Junior until the cracker was gone … and mom had none.
I watched this spectacle with amusement, but in the back of my mind there was a discomfort. When they flew off, I wondered what it was. I know. I had seen this before. Where? Oh, yes. I had seen this same thing played out in nearly every visit to the store or to the restaurant. But it wasn’t birds. It was people. Little people – we call them kids – were playing out the same scenario for their adult guardians. "I want the toy truck." "You can’t have the toy truck." "Give me the toy truck." "I don’t have money for the toy truck." And somehow the kid left with the toy truck. "I want ice cream." "You need to eat your dinner." "I don’t want to eat my dinner." "No dessert if you don’t eat your dinner." And somehow, the waitress is taking away a half-eaten dinner and returning with a bowl of ice cream (which may or may not actually get eaten). Or how about that commercial that some of you may have seen? A mother is opening a bank account. Her 12-year-old daughter, dressed in a soccer uniform, is with her. The banker is telling her the benefits of the ATM card they offer. The mother is pleased, but the daughter is unimpressed. Then the man says, "You can use it at restaurants ..." and the daughter lights up. "Team dinners!" "... And at stores ..." "New uniforms!" "... And at thousands of locations around the country." "Road trip!" Now, the daughter has nothing to do with the mother’s choice to bank there or not, but if she’s not pleased, obviously the bank is the wrong one. And she’s only pleased if she’s spending her mother into bankruptcy.
Watching that grackle hassle his mother into skipping her own lunch, I wondered if there was such a thing as giving too much to one’s kids. It seems to me that, if we want them to be self-sufficient, there needs to be a limitation – perhaps a severe one – that will urge the child to learn how to acquire for themselves instead of expecting to be provided for. I wonder how many parents suffer from the needless tyranny of the child.
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