Arguing

This happened several weeks ago. Evan and I often argue about arguing and it drives Vivian and Jo crazy.

Evan was eating dinner. His bowl of noodles was half full (or was it half empty?). I enquired if he needed any more. He asked "Can't you see I still have noodles?"

He said he couldn't understand why would I ask if he wanted more when he already had noodles, and ended up calling my original question unreasonable. I didn't fight it. I knew the next course was cookies.

When he had taken a bite into his first cookie,

Me: "Do you want more cookies?"
Me: (before he could reply) "I shouldn't be asking such unreasonable things."

Evan saw the problem right away. But instead of admitting defeat he attacked the basis of the analogy, which is pretty good strategy. Or plain unreasonableness.

Evan: "Daddy - don't you know that we are talking about cookies now and not noodles? You are again being unreasonable."