Speaking of politics

I have a diplomacy question for you.

The other day I made lunch, and it was pretty good. It was some kind of leftover redo, some flip and flap creation that I had tossed together, but it tasted good and had vegetables and protein, hooray!

Kid A ate a few bites and then said, "Mama. This isn't good!" You'd have to hear his tone. His tone rhymed with "Mama. I've got more toys than you!" Sort of a sing-songy-I-just-thought-you-should-know-so-I'm-telling-you tone.

I said, "Kid A, just eat your food."

He scrunched up his forehead and rolled his eyes and yelped, "It tastes like Monster Food!"

So I had no choice but to say, "Kid A! That's a terrible thing to say to someone who just cooked lunch for you."

My tone rhymed with "You ungrateful wretch, I cook and I clean and I rock the baby and I slave away, and all you do is play and talk about Monster Food!" It's a tone l reserve for small children and baby animals.

(I find it's good to use this tone to make empty threats that you know you will never in a thousand years carry out. Like, "If you talk about my food like this again, I'm going to stop feeding you." Effective.)

Anyways, Kid A pondered this for awhile, and then he asked me a perfectly reasonable question.

"Mama? What is a nice way to tell someone that you don't like something that they made?"

I had to say, "I don't know."

What about you? Do you know? Especially where a six-year-old is concerned? Is there a nice way?