My jacket was zipped, the stroller was packed, and the meltdown began when I tried to get my daughter's shoes on. I don't know why shoes were an issue this morning but they were. After struggling past her kicking feet and getting her little velcro shoes on her feet, I went for the coat.
We were going to the park. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
Well, the jacket set off round two of the hissy fit. When I sat my daughter in the living room chair and tried to put on the jacket, she hit me, right across the eye, her little fingernail scratching me a little bit as she did so.
I grabbed her little hand and told her "no." I have to admit that the tone I used was the same tone I use with my dog when I am training her. It's a deep, grumbly, growly tone of voice, one that speaks authority to dogs, but, apparently, freaks the shit out of little kids. My daughter's eyes went wide and the fit escalated to levels I really haven't seen before.
She couldn't catch her breath, she wouldn't look at me, she turned around and buried her face in the crease between the chair's seat and back. I felt horrible. I left her alone, knowing that I was only going to make her worse. She cried, curled up on the seat of that chair, for ten minutes before she moved off of it.
She eyed me warily before she sauntered off to her toy corner. Again, she tucked her head so she couldn't see me, this time against the back of her dump truck. She pushed the balls inside the bed back and forth without joy or enthusiasm. Every now and then I could hear the hitch of her breath as she was slowly calming down. I tried to speak to her in gentle tones, to comment on her play, to change the subject. Each time she shook her head and continued on without looking at me.
I've never had this experience, this lasting grudge for discipline given. My tone was probably too harsh, but the reason for the tone was justified. It's hard to discipline someone you love so much, especially when you see how it can turn them against you, how you become the threatening father like so many fairy tale stories, or bad Lifetime TV movies.
It's a line, a line I have define for myself as a father. I felt bad for scaring her like that.
But, then again, I just put her down for a nap and she snuggled with me for twenty minutes, longer than any other day, her head in the crook of my shoulder, my nose pressed to the top of her scalp, breathing her in as deeply as I could.
What a day.
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