"Good Part, Sad Part"

For the past several months, we've been doing "good part, sad part" of our days at the dinner table.  It took a little while to catch on, but now it's a regular thing with our family and Ella is often the one who initiates the conversation, which I love.

After a particularly rough afternoon and naptime debacle,  we sat around the table and Ella said, "Mommy, ask me what my sad part of the day was."  (Usually, she asks one of us first, so this was kinda different).

"Okay, what was your sad part today, Bug?"

"When I was crying in my room and you locked the door.  I really wanted you to come in and wipe my face.  If you had just come in and wiped my face, I would have gone to sleep."


{Did you hear that sound?  That would be the sound of a knife ripping through my heart}.




She said it just like that, too.  I've always known that she's an old soul, but she sometimes speaks with such concision and maturity that it frightens me.  I looked at Jake, searching his eyes for some kind of response of my own.  Then, his mouth turned down a little at the corners.  Crap.


Yes, she had thrown another of her stellar tantrums.  And yes, I had locked the door because I had warned I would do so if she continued to get up.  From downstairs, the muffled sobs really all sounded about the same, all of them intermittently laced with "mommy.." and "come in here..." and "nap.." and well, I just tuned it out.   Eventually, it got quiet and I had patted myself on the back for sticking it out and not giving in.   Not only did I need to follow through with what I had told her would happen, but, whether right or wrong, I also felt a certain amount of entitlement to my own rest time.  

But something about the way she spoke at the table last night broke me.  After a few minutes, I realized why.  It wasn't about "discipline versus no discipline" or because I felt that I shouldn't have followed through on what I had told her I would do.  Instead, her words made me realize that often, I treat parenting as a "cause-effect" relationship, not always a "mother-child" relationship.  It's easy to do, especially in the three's, with all of it's button pushing, negotiations and boundary-drawing (then erasing, then re-drawing).   But Ella doesn't recognize this yet.  The only difference between these two scenarios, to my three year old, is a comforting snuggle or the wiping of tear-stained cheeks, even if those tear-stained cheeks had been warned, multiple times.   So, while it didn't seem like much to me, it was HUGE to her.  

I sometimes forget, from high atop my mountain of discipline justifications, to climb down and see things from her vantage point.

"Oh.  Oh....Bug, I'm so sorry about that.  I didn't know that's all you wanted.   Mommy will listen better next time, okay?"




Her face instantly brightened up.  (Man, I'm so thankful she doesn't know how to hold a grudge).  "It's okay Mommy. I know you didn't mean it....  She looked down at her plate, then back up at me.


Hey, mommy??"  




I winced just slightly, waiting for her to twist the knife a little more.


"If I eat all my pasta, can I have some mango ice cream??"






And suddenly, we're on to the good part of our day.  Just like that.   This is life with a three year old.