Sometimes, parenting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Especially if you are working under mistaken assumptions of authority, like myself.
I am now persuaded that the rule book I received when I was initiated into motherhood was seriously flawed.
It entitled me to at least ten years of clout before puberty kicked in — I’m barely three years into this venture and already I am finding myself getting trumped by a sprig of a girl who hasn’t even been to preschool.
Apparently, Mommy doesn’t always know best. Nor does she necessarily get to be right.
My life is starting to become a day-by-day game of Who’s The Boss? and I’m losing, terribly.
At first, it was fun to role play. My daughter loved to “be Mommy” and I used our playtime as an indicator of how wicked I had been all week.
Playing my part as “daughter”, I would re-enact certain incidents that had happened throughout the day and see how my actions were mirrored by Mini Me.
If she told me to share with my brother in a kind, respectful voice, I reassured myself that I must sound much bossier in my head.
In “daughter” mode, I would even push my luck and ask for outrageous things like a pink rhinoceros or pet dinosaur — it made me happy to see her shake her head and patiently tell me no, I couldn’t have a dinosaur because they were just bones now (she said yes to the pink rhino).
Unfortunately, now my daughter thinks she’s the Mom, 24/7. Particularly in respect to her brother and anything he happens to be doing at any given time.
Her favourite pastime seems to be echoing everything I say to him and she finds it especially delicious if she gets to repeat a reprimand.
This has become a bit of a problem in our household, so much that now when caught bossing her brother around we only have to ask her, “What’s the Rule?” to which she hastily replies in a droning tone, “Worry about yourself.”
The plus side to this is that when in another room, I know the instant my son is either misbehaving or actively contemplating a misdeed; the downside is that I find tattling a bit grating on the nerves.
And if my son has been doing something naughty, which invariably happens the moment I leave his sight, it seems to reinforce her position as Gestapo.
After one particularly bossy morning at the kitchen table, I finally had to have the “You’re not the Mom” conversation with her.
She took it pretty well — considering I vetoed her request to be the boss of her brother even if she’s just pretending. That was a can of worms I didn’t want to open.
After much debate, we finally conceded that she could indeed be in charge when she was a woman and had a “sweetie” of her own.
My daughter’s first aspiration in life: to grow up and be bossy like me.
How wonderful.
Raina Dezall is a mom who prefers to use the term “compelling” in describing herself. It just sounds nicer. You can contact her at mother_load@hotmail.com.