Although there isn’t a pretentious bone in her body, my daughter is working on maintaining composure and minimizing dramatic body language when faced with a less-than-preferred set of circumstances.  She comes by this naturally; my wife has been described as, “possessing the subtlety of a train wreck” on more than one occasion. What you see is what you get, and my girls are BEAUTIFUL!

But it’s also good to “roll with the punches” and learn how to not offend everyone.  So in an effort to put these concepts into practice, my wife decided to “Rage Bait” our daughter.

Explaining that this was merely a simulation, she started by telling our daughter we were adopting a dog (she is terrified of dogs due to an incident when she was a toddler). She handled this one with a minor spat of nervous giggling, but so far, so good. 

And the next few situations were basically lay-ups, but then my wife wove a heartrending tale of a homeless man who needed a bed…and we had decided to DONATE OUR CHILD’S CHERISHED LOFT BED to this guy.

Her face instantly darkened with concern. “I need to go up to my room for a minute.”

30 seconds later, she skipped down the stairs, smiling once again.  “You were joking! I KNEW you hadn’t given away my loft bed!”

In addition to the Rage Bait Game, we also play family games like Literal vs Figurative and Sarcasm Detector…the fun never ends at the Wageman House!