My Daughter, "Hanging On" to Bitterness. Seriously?!

There are two things you should never discuss on the internet: gay marriage and parenting. But I've never been too clever so I'll push that assumption aside for the moment and share my parenting moment from tonight and hope the trolls don't come out to tell me what I should have done. I'm not saying it was my finest hour as a parent. I'm just relaying what happened. So. Here we go...

My daughter loves rules. She soaks them up, thrives within their parameters. She is someone that genuinely believes she follows the rules nearly 100% of the time. She even told me one day, “Daddy I’m not as bad as Adam and Eve. In fact, if God told me not to eat one kind of fruit, I wouldn’t eat ANY fruit in the garden so I wouldn’t eat the wrong one on accident.” So when she gets punished for some wrong thing she’s done, she feels deeply and personally wronged.

Several weeks ago, she got a time out that infuriated her. After all, stalling on doing a chore wasn’t really against the rules was it? So she sat there, pride and shame brewing up a perfect storm of traumatized obstinacy until Debra let her out on parole and they worked happily together for almost 2 hours.

I’ll be honest, I’m grumpy today. Depressed, tired, despondent, isolated, and irritable. But one of my beliefs is that good parenting must go forward in spite of my mood. So when Annabel spitefully elbowed me in the face tonight, I responded swiftly and firmly. I admit I was extra snarky with her tonight in challenging her new belief that height is the sole determiner of age... but the elbow was not cool. Time out. 

Drama ensued, an apology was not forthcoming, and I gently explained that the alternative was a spanking. At that point, she melted down, sorrowful panic filling her big adorable eyes. Through heaves she said something that stunned me coming from a 4-year-old. “I’m just… I’m just still holding on to the other time! I’m still holding to the other time you gave me a time out!” Ah, refreshing, frightening, little-kid honesty.

A sudden flood of sympathy. I almost lost it myself. “Annabel, can I just hold you for a minute?” A pitiful nod as she crawled into my lap and unleashed several minutes of forlorn, angry sobs into my shirt. Where did this toddler come from? This tiny adult with the complex emotions that debilitate her so thoroughly at such a young age? I’m consistently awed not only by how multifaceted she is, but by how deeply she feels things. She seems to have all the complexity of an adult with none of the coping mechanisms.

I’m not vouching for this, but in the moment, I went with my gut to not do the spanking and instead forced her to walk the top edge of the couch for her consequence (which made her grin) followed by ferocious wrestling and tickling.

So did she “let go” of her anger about her past punishments? Or is she “still holding on” to it? To be honest, I don’t know. And that’s okay. But at least we were laughing, and talking, and rolling around together by the end. I guess that’s a start. I'd love to draw a spiritual metaphor (they feel readily available). But dude, it's almost midnight. So. Draw your own.