This Time, It Really Is Ironic

While I delight in All Things my Amazing Child does, they often don’t make sense. Like, she’ll push off the shelf I just told her not to push. She’ll clear off a table after I just ask her not to do it, to look with her eyes, to use gentle hands on the dishes, or whatever.

I’m sure there are logical developmental reasons for her actions, all pertaining to her cognitive and social growth and boundary testing, but I wonder if there isn’t a teensy bit of “Fuck you” in there. Perhaps this is projection, but I put a lot of “fuck you” into my actions. “You want me to hurry here? I’m gonna take my time. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.”

Maybe she’s thinking that, too. “What? You don’t want me to push/grab this? I’m gonna do it anyway. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why.” And right now she’s four. Fuck You Fours.

I never wanted to give my kid a label. Labels are so dismissive, and we’ve both more than that. But I also never wanted to be the parent to promise myself I’d be a certain way and then not be that way. I promised myself I’d be the parent who never promised herself to be a certain way and then not be it!

But here we are. Like all parents who promise themselves not to be a parent who promises themselves, I’m failing in the promise I made to not make.

Irony.