Hard Time

The beautiful thing about the three-day weekend is that you have three solid days of uninterrupted time with your dear, sweet children. The bad thing about the three-weekend, however, is that you have three solid days of uninterrupted time with your dear, sweet children. It's like they say: every silver lining has a cloud...

Our fun began early on Friday morning when Baby Kate (seventeen months this week, by the way; hardly a baby anymore) decided to wake up at 6:15, which was nice. The other two followed her soon after, so our day was well underway by seven AM, complete with all the fussing, fighting, and bickering that you might expect from three children who were far too tired to be awake at such an hour.

But once Henry had his waffles, Alison had her Frosted Flakes, and the baby had her oatmeal, things started to settle down for a while. They watched an episode or two of Caillou and Between the Lions before drowning in a SpongeBob marathon on Nickelodeon, allowing Leslie and I to have an actual conversation. Surely, it would be a wonderful weekend.

Or maybe not.

Our only plans for the day were for a lunch trip to our favorite Chinese restaurant, Fortune Cookies. As lunchtime grew closer, Alison and Henry grew restless. One moment they were sitting quietly, the next they were jumping off the couch, hurling things down the hallway, and generally wrecking havoc upon our home.

Faced with seventy-two hours of domestic disaster, I did what any patient father would do -- I sent Alison and Henry to their rooms and told them to stay there until lunch time.

As we were readying to leave ten minutes later, I walked past Alison's open door and noticed that she was drawing something on her magnetic doodle pad and looking rather glum. She quickly tried to stash the board as I walked in, but I finally convinced her to show it to me. Here's what it said (click photo to enlarge):

I kind of wish I'd let her finish that last line. What might it have said? Here are a few of my best guesses:

1. Mama and Daddy don't love sea food.
2. Mama and Daddy don't love giving me timeouts.
3. Mama and Daddy don't lower their standards.

Or, could it possibly be? Mama and Daddy don't love me? Could it really be true that my six-year-old daughter was sitting in her room dashing out a jailhouse complaint questioning our love for her? If I hadn't come by when I did, would she have broken into a soulful rendition of "Nobody Knows De Trouble I Seen?" Might she have used a handheld mirror to peer down at her brother in the cell down the hall? Worse yet, would she have fashioned a shank out of an old Barbie doll?

Clearly, she needed some love. I sat down next to her on the bed and explained things. I told her that she had to listen when I told her to quiet down. I told her that she couldn't throw things in the house. I told her that she couldn't set fire to rolls of toilet paper and hurl them out of her cell to incite the other inmates to riot. She nodded in agreement to all of this, but I don't think she heard me. (For Leslie's version of the story, click here.)

So I got to the point. I took her face in my hands and looked deep into her eyes as I told her that I would always love her, no matter what she did. I told her that I loved her when she didn't listen, I loved her when she bounced on the couch, I loved her when I gave her a timeout. I told her that there was nothing she could ever do to make me stop loving her, and then I kissed her on her forehead, confident that my speech had been so touchingly brilliant that we'd never have another problem with Alison again. The next fifteen years would be nothing but smooth sailing, I was sure.

It lasted about five hours. Just after we finished dinner that night, a few minutes after Henry had left the table and Baby Kate had been freed from her high chair, only Alison remained at her seat in between Leslie and me. The house was strangely quiet, and Leslie and I were talking about something that must've been terribly interesting. I say it must've been terribly interesting because neither of us noticed that our sweet Alison, newly and supremely confident in our unconditional love, had used her fork to carve her entire name -- A-L-I-S-O-N -- in the dinner table. Right under our noses.

This was a clear violation of her parole, so she was sent back to jail with some unconditional scolding.

The good news? We're smack in the middle of a five-day work week. The bad? Thanksgiving weekend is only ten days away...

Comments

[weigooksaram]

I can't believe she wrote that. It's kind of funny and sad at the same time. It sounds like she knew exactly what buttons to push. She must be smart.

I put K in her room to play by herself often, sometimes for my own sake rather than as a discipline tactic. Better than yelling.

(BTW, regarding your comment, I'm just taking a break. Nothing bad happened.)

[Keith]

I have never known why of all things to carve into wood, write into cement, or spray paint on walls, children decide to go with their name. Had she gone with a four letter word then maybe she could cast "reasonable doubt" and blame it on the 17 month old. Clearly a stretch, actually not a very good defense at all, but that didn't stop OJ. :)

[CMES]

I have never written before but I just had to comment on this one. I remeber as a kid I was a little tyrent and was sent to my room on numerous occasions. I remember being so angry that the only way to vent my frustration was to say something really hurtful like: “I hate you mommy!”, or “Your so mean!”.

I also clearly remember trying to escape from my imprisonment by digging my way through the laminate tiles using a wire hanger. Some how I believed that if I had dug deep enough I could reach my friends house down the street, play all day and that my parents would never know because I would cover the hole up with my throw rug.

I’m a lot older now and kinda past that phase, but I had my share of experiences with my eleven year old as well. If you think its hard now wait until their 11. I have also come to realize that kids are people to, (just smaller, smellier and can't fully comprehend certain emotions), their ways of being angry are just slightly different than ours.