Nobody Wins
Okay, first of all - PEOPLE!!! DON'T CALL US BEFORE 8 AM ON A WEEKEND!!!
Though I guess I should be grateful to whomever called us and then hung up, because now I'm awake and Cook and Dutch are still asleep, which means I have a few moments of sweet, sweet Personal Time. Which I'm going to spend blogging.
On to my topic!
I am ashamed to admit that I often have a hard time remembering that Dutch and I are actually on the same side. When she wants to do something, and I want her to do something else, it's way too easy for me to get locked into the notion that I have to win the battle.
If I want to go out, and she wants to stay home, pretending to be a drummer playing "grasshopper music" (lingering confusion from my attempt to explain about the music of the Beatles), I frequently feel like I have to grit my teeth and grimly drag her out the door, goddamnit, regardless of how important it actually is. Part of this, I think, is the unconscious desire to follow the parenting advice to not spoil your child or let her manipulate you. But I think that's pretty silly advice. It's her job to figure out how to manipulate the world around her, and it's my job to identify what I think are the important unbendable rules, and then decide what's worth battling over. She has so little power, and I think it's fine for her to know that she has some power over me. My policy is that I pick carefully what issues to take a stand on, and then stand firm on those issues. If I say no, I have to maintain the no. In theory, this makes perfect sense to me. If she wants to go three days without washing her hair, that's okay with me, as long as the rest of her gets washed. In real life, because I'm not really a nice person, when I tell her cheerfully that it's time for bath and she defiantly (and whinily!) yells "I won't wash my hair!!" I look at her matted little head, and I kind of want to dunk it in the bathwater by force. I haven't done anything that awful, but I frequently get into ridiculous pissing matches with her, in which we're both refusing to back down. Realizing that I'm more or less at the same emotional and social level as a grubby-haired 3-year-old is pretty humbling.
Though I guess I should be grateful to whomever called us and then hung up, because now I'm awake and Cook and Dutch are still asleep, which means I have a few moments of sweet, sweet Personal Time. Which I'm going to spend blogging.
On to my topic!
I am ashamed to admit that I often have a hard time remembering that Dutch and I are actually on the same side. When she wants to do something, and I want her to do something else, it's way too easy for me to get locked into the notion that I have to win the battle.
If I want to go out, and she wants to stay home, pretending to be a drummer playing "grasshopper music" (lingering confusion from my attempt to explain about the music of the Beatles), I frequently feel like I have to grit my teeth and grimly drag her out the door, goddamnit, regardless of how important it actually is. Part of this, I think, is the unconscious desire to follow the parenting advice to not spoil your child or let her manipulate you. But I think that's pretty silly advice. It's her job to figure out how to manipulate the world around her, and it's my job to identify what I think are the important unbendable rules, and then decide what's worth battling over. She has so little power, and I think it's fine for her to know that she has some power over me. My policy is that I pick carefully what issues to take a stand on, and then stand firm on those issues. If I say no, I have to maintain the no. In theory, this makes perfect sense to me. If she wants to go three days without washing her hair, that's okay with me, as long as the rest of her gets washed. In real life, because I'm not really a nice person, when I tell her cheerfully that it's time for bath and she defiantly (and whinily!) yells "I won't wash my hair!!" I look at her matted little head, and I kind of want to dunk it in the bathwater by force. I haven't done anything that awful, but I frequently get into ridiculous pissing matches with her, in which we're both refusing to back down. Realizing that I'm more or less at the same emotional and social level as a grubby-haired 3-year-old is pretty humbling.
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