I'm cute - I don't need to listen
We are sitting on the couch, my son Mendel half on my lap, my daughter Isabella next to him. I am reading a book, they just had their bath; they are calm and tired. This is the part of the day I like best, when everything slows down, nobody is screaming and we all exhale simultaneously.
Then Isabella starts to tickle Mendel’s foot; first he giggles, then he decides he’s had enough and tells her to stop. She doesn’t, so he tells her again. When she still doesn’t stop, I tell her four more times, and, you guessed it, she still doesn’t stop. She looks at me defiantly, I feel myself getting mad; Mendel raises his right arm and prepares to strike.
I manage to grab his arm just in time, close the book, and ask my daughter: “Do you want to go to bed right now?”
She shakes her head, no, of course not.
“Then knock it off! Stop messing with your brother.”
This falls on deaf ears. After all, ‘messing with the brother’ is fun, because it makes him produce these loud piercing screams. Like you’re pushing a button, and the sirens go off. It’s definitely in the top ten of fun things to do around the house.
The list of fun things also includes rearranging the furniture and then complaining that it’s too hard to put back. Pulling all your clothes off the hangers and then telling your mother that you can’t fix it because the bar is too high and you can’t reach. Squeezing out the toothpaste, stealing a lip pencil because it draws so nicely on the vanity, and forgetting all kinds of things, like putting your plate in the sink, or finishing your dinner.
Nothing makes Isabella as mad as being told to clean up her own mess. Utterly unreasonable, she thinks, and besides, isn’t that what mothers are for?
The other day, I sat her down to ask her why she made such messes, but she just stared at me without answering.
“Mommy and Daddy worked very, very hard to buy this house. How much money do you think it cost us to buy a house?”
I could tell she was actually giving this some thought because she scrunched up her nose and looked at the ceiling.
“Maybe as much as a hundred dollars?”
She pronounced the amount as if it was the most outrageous number she could think of.
Time for operation Shock and Awe, I thought, and I told her the actual price we paid for the house. “And this is what you did with it,” I said, as I pointed at the peeled wallpaper and the door to the bathroom that has red scribbles all over it, as well as the line “I love my mom”. As if sucking up could help her out of this one.
My daughter has been messy since she could walk, and lately, things are getting worse. This worries me, because she has a brother who is only three and only too willing to follow in her example. He’s already drawn all over my (white!) kitchen cabinets, and guess what: if you don’t notice it right away, even the magic eraser doesn’t help you. Yet, however I yell, scream, and barter, they don’t listen when I say: “Please don’t touch the black sharpie, please don’t give your Barbie a bath in the toilet, and please don’t attempt to wash your hair with tooth paste.”
They happily ignore me, and I’m left to wonder whether those home improvements that everybody else is so enthusiastic about will ever come my way. I also wonder, f they don’t listen to me now, what will life be like in ten years? Should I worry about them not listening to me when I talk about scary things like unprotected sex, and driving drunk?
Maybe I should take a page out of my daughter’s book and ignore myself. Better focus on the small things for now, like that really strange stain that magically appeared on the bathroom floor. What is that, anyway?
Comments