Today *sucked.* I was not a great mom today, and my kid was not well-behaved today. She broke my heart a hundred times by saying mean things or by dismissing or ignoring what I was actually doing for her. Every intersection was a battle. I wasn't a sucker, and she had some time-outs, and she's not happy with some of the consequences that came down on her, but these power struggles aren't fun for me either. I am drained and feel much less hopeful about life than I did when I woke up this morning.
Here is what a good mom does, I think:
- She makes a toy theater out of a moving box
- She goes with the flow beautifully when it's raining outside
- She makes a card game for her children out of pressed leaves
- She lets the kids make pancakes
It isn't helping that D has been buying some interesting new things to play with E when he comes home at night (like a train set and a Wii and and and...), but that's not all that's going on. I have become so much the bad, boring, no-nonsense parent that I don't even exist as a person in her realm. I am just a structural form to bounce against -- physically and emotionally.
The whole time I drove her to school yesterday, she fantasized about what it would be like when Daddy can drive her to school *every* day. I'm not sure where that fantasy has come from because she and I have talked a lot about how I will walk her to school when she can go to the neighborhood public school.
She is almost 5. I realize there are some normal development issues going on here with her beginning to have a sense of herself as separate and as an individual all to herself, but I am not sure how much longer I can take being the bad guy 90% of the time.
Tough skin, I have. It's hard-won. But this dynamic with E makes me feel hopeless.
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