Credit

When Lena says thank you to someone, unprompted, or when she shares a toy with a younger kid, or she doesn't run out into the middle of the road when there are cars around, friends or passersby might compliment me on how well-behaved Lena is. They might even go so far as to say that I am doing a good job as a parent. 

Ha. Well let me tell you. 

Last night, Lena was being a complete monster at bedtime. It was late, she she was over-tired, the usual suspects. And then she comes out with this gem:

You are a bad mommy.

She's standing at the door of her room, sherbet orange pajamas with neon yellow and green butterflies on them, snot running into her mouth and tears running into the snot and she just yells the worst thing she can possibly think of at that moment:

You are a bad mommy. You hurt my feelings. 

In retrospect, this is cute, right? The world is so easily black and white, people are bad and they are good, and the worst thing you can be in the world is bad and the worst thing you can do to a person is hurt their feelings. 

Here's what I didn't do, and what I wanted to do. I wanted to say, Look here kid, You are hurting your own feelings. If you had just listened from the beginning, and oh, you know fallen asleep, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in right now. 

Instead of releasing this passive aggressive vitriol, I took a deep breath, counted to ten, sat on her bed, and got her to sit on my lap to calm down. To which she then says, I need some water. 

Now. Unbeknownst to her, I had already gotten her ice water, her beverage of choice in the evening. So as I got up to go get the water from her bedside table she says, her face buried in the pillow, No, I want cold water. 

It is cold water, I say. Look, there's even still ice in it.

And I pick up the water and sit down next to her on the bed holding it out to her. 

Of course, she didn't actually want water, she really just wanted to ask for something and to have me go away and have to get it for her so she could regroup and decide what her next tactic of bedtime delay would be--so I'm sitting on the bed, holding the water, and Lena is just sobbing into her pillow.

Friends, 

It took every fiber of self-control that I had to not dump that cup of ice water on that kid's head. 

And honestly, I really just need a little credit for that.