What She Knows

My daughter (how many blog posts have I started with those two words?) is in many ways just like other children her age.   She wants to have friends, play games, eat candy, complain about her brother, and laugh at funny stories and jokes.   She wants to be liked, can be very friendly and equally cruel, depending on the situation and her mood.   One thing she wants though, is to know things.

Let me give you an example, her friends come over from next door and my daughter tells them we’re carving our pumpkins.   The friends can see we’re carving pumpkins from the general disarray of pumpkin carving paraphernalia, pumpkin pulp and pumpkin seeds all over the counter.   My daughter can’t see any of that though, so she’s marshaling the knowledge as she sees it in her mind.

She told Madison and Whitaker we were finished carving our pumpkins.   Madison informed my daughter that the pumpkin wasn’t carved.   My daughter said it was.   I jumped in and said the lid had been cut open, the innards had been removed and the pattern was already on the pumpkin.   All that remained was the final carving of the Fortnite character dancing.  

But my daughter was wrong.   She thought she knew something but turned out to be wrong and was corrected simply because someone walked into the room and could see the state of a station.   I wonder if that’s hard for her sometimes.    She seems to handle it well, but it hits her again and again and again that everyone else can do something she can’t—they can see.

My daughter does have some good skills though.   Her brother didn’t want to have anything to do with the insides of the pumpkin because they felt “gross” to him.   She, on the other hand, was all about getting into the mess and pulling out the seeds.   She wanted the seeds so I would roast them with sea salt, a tradition we’ve done every year.

She sifted through two pumpkins full of pulp and got a large collection of seeds.   Her friends weren’t the least bit interested in helping.   I showed her how to skim the seeds off the top by adding water to the bowl.

And then, at the end, I did something I was upset about.  My daughter wanted to go play with her friends.   She had rinsed her hands off and had turned around, about to jump down from the stool she was sorting seeds from when she did this hand shaking thing she does.   Instead of drying her hands, she violently shakes them, flinging water in every direction.   She’s done this in airport bathrooms, in nice clothing, when I’ve been bent over right near her and it’s gotten in my eyes and she does it when a cloth or towel is right near her.   It’s become a habit.

She did it and I said something about asking her not to do that.   Her friend said, “what did she do?”  I silently shook my hands so Madison would know and as I was doing it my daughter said very quietly, “don’t tell them”.  

Sigh.   Of course Madison said, “she already showed us.”   I had shamed my daughter in front of her friends.   What kind of mother does that?   I was disappointed in Madison for saying anything, but she’s seven and I was the one who wasn’t mature in the situation, not her.  I tried to apologize to my daughter but I knew she was already closed off and wouldn’t have discussed it even if I’d pulled her into a room alone to talk to her about it.

I do a lot of apologizing to my children.   I think I’m not getting the parenting thing right a lot of the time.   Fortunately they still love me.   They came up to the attic to find me tonight after they’d brushed their teeth to say they loved me and good night.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came into the bedroom yesterday morning and saw my husband’s foot sticking out of the covers.   He said, “Dad, you need to trim your toenails.   If they were my toes I would eat them.”   We’ve had a discussion with my son about chewing his nails, but at this pint he trims (chews?) them before we have a chance to trim them.   My daughter’s nails are the opposite, always seemingly needing to be trimmed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Uncle Bob was here for a visit a few days ago.   The day he left my daughter came home from school and when she walked in the door she said, “It smells like Bob in here.”  Then she said, “Actually, it smells like pizza.”  My husband asked her, “what does Bob smell like?”   My daughter told him, “pretty much the same as pizza."