distance = denial

Okay, the last blog entry was written at work Friday morning, which is the time of the week in which I have attained the most space between Nora and myself and I guess that space was making me feel all hopeful and sanguine about things, e.g., the future, my ability to parent this kid, life in general. I can spell denial; I just don’t always know when I’m hip deep in it. So now, it’s 2:30 pm on Sunday afternoon, which is approaching the nadir, no not the zenith, I mean low point (I did the Sunday crossword this morning, can you tell) of our time spent in each other’s presence each week (except for holidays which just about do me in regardless if Nora is in the mix) and I’m no longer hopeful. She was out of control at the after-care field trip to the natural history museum on Friday afternoon. She had a bad behavior write up and from Ellie’s report of her “shenanigans,” the after-care instructors missed seeing the worst of it.
I don’t know where her train went off the tracks on Friday, but she never got it back on. I couldn’t let her behavior go unpunished (I won’t itemize, but she blew it in so many different ways during that field trip that she must have set a school record). So I let the other girls have Friday movie night and I kept Nora with me, upstairs, working on the alphabet or watching me do dishes or something else boring and then I put her to bed early. Saturday started okay, but her train left the tracks in the afternoon when she let fly on Mimi and Candyland hit the floor after hitting Mimi first because Nora wasn’t winning. When I went to the play room to see what was happening, she threw the game board again and yelled at me to “LEAVE ME ‘LONE.” I know this sounds routine for a lot of other parents, but playing fair and square and no back talking are hallmarks of the Hanson household and it stuns me that I have a child that does not respect either concept. She threw a tantrum when I expressed my disapproval of not playing fair and square and I hadn’t even mentioned the yelling at mom crapola. But, we recovered, had Ellie’s friend over for play date, but something else made her snap and at 7:00 pm last night, she threw a small chair at the wall in the play room because she wasn’t getting her way and I removed her and put her to bed early, again, and boy did she wail, and boy, I didn’t care and I know I would have held Mimi or YuYu if they were crying that hard and I didn’t even want to go near Nora.
Earlier today she was sharing a banana with YuYu and they were getting to the end. Nora had taken more bites than YuYu and YuYu asked for the last bite. Nora pushed that last big honking piece of banana into her mouth and giggled maniacally when YuYu looked disappointed. And boy, I sure hate to see that kind of lack of empathy and perverse enjoyment of someone else’s pain in any child of mine, and I didn’t want to be near her and the maniacal giggling bought her another time out. The stupid thing is that I know she has no inkling what she had done wrong and all she knows is that she’s being punished and can’t connect the punishment with the crime. She is napping right now because she lost control again when she didn’t want to play SPY like the other three and started pouting, then tattling, then yelling, then crying, then I suggested that she was too tired to play fair and square and it was time for nap and then she treated us all to another entertaining tantrum and boy did she wail, and boy, I didn’t care, and she finally fell asleep and I’ll pay for it later when she can’t sleep at bedtime.
It is one thing to know and understand that she is a three year old in a big strapping five-year-old body, but it is a wholly different thing to respond in a loving and patient manner when the five-year-old tantrums like a toddler that you don’t like very much. This is hard, she is hard, and she makes life harder than it needs to be. Just like a yoyo, ain’t I?