When your children are little, you have to accept the fact that at some point, they are going to decide that you are annoying and they don't want to hang out with you. I decided this when I was about 13. I remember coming back from a school trip, my parents coming to1 me up and me suddenly finding everything they did completely2 .
From then on, and for a number of years, while I would unwillingly accept their3 within the confines (限制) of home, I would do anything I could to4 myself from them publicly. Out5 , I would run into a friend and they would say, "You just doing some shopping with your6 ?" and I would reply, for example, "Only because I had to,7 they wouldn't know what to buy because they're idiots and everything they do is wrong."
I have been aware that this was going to8 to our boys at some point but I wasn't9 for it to be this early. Eleven? I considered using the10 I had always toyed with (随便对待), which was to go the other way and become as embarrassing as I possibly could for my own amusement. One day recently I thought it would be11 if I shouted to my son how much I loved him and how much he12 to me at the school gates. I thought he would be funny-embarrassed. He wasn't. He looked around at me with anger.
So I have13 it. We just have to wait it out now. I am hoping he'll be through the other side by about age 19, so it's just a little eight-year14 for him to want to be15 us again.
