Time With Mom and Dad: Making It Fair

Jeff Opdyke:

“It isn’t fair.”
I’d be willing to bet that somewhere, some kid is uttering those words at this very moment. And most likely the outburst was triggered by sibling rivalry.
Amy and I got a taste of it (hardly our first) a while back when we took our 13-year-old son to see the latest installment of the “Twilight” movie saga. He has read all the books and seen the first two movies, so we’ve been promising we would take him as soon as we could.
Our 7-year-old daughter stayed with her grandmother, Amy’s mom. We knew various scenes in the movie — as well as the dark, overarching theme of vampires and werewolves — would simply be too scary for her.
So we arranged for her and her grandmother to have dinner at a restaurant our daughter likes. That way everyone would be happy.
Or so we thought.