Perfectly Imperfect

At the park last night, after giving Tallulah the ten minute warning, I told her it was time to go. "No!" she screamed and ran away from me. I caught her, threw her over my shoulder and left the park while she screamed and tried to kick my head. Kent pushed the stroller with Moxie.

"I want a drink of water," Tallulah wailed.

But when I set her back on her feet, she immediately made a run for it back to the playground so up on my shoulder she went again. We cut across the baseball field and I tried setting her down again. She dug her heels in and leaned back so I was dragging her. "I'm going to let go of your hand and you're going to go Plop! right down in that orange dirt. Mm hm, you are gonna be one orange behind-ed four year old," I told her. But then I let go of her hand and she made a beeline again back to the playground. Kent and I alternated carrying her squirmy, wiggly, kicking body the quarter mile back home. She screamed the entire time. "No! No! I want water! I want to play more! Put me do-own!"

Of course we passed neighbors on the way. Of course they stared at us disapprovingly even though we smiled and waved and pretended we weren't related to the screaming growth on Kent's shoulder. (What, this? Huh, you're right. It is a screaming child on my shoulder. How did that get there?) When we got home, Tallulah was sent to her room where she kicked the door--repeatedly-- so hard I thought she would probably put a hole in it. Rather than allow more drama while Kent prepared dinner, I made Tallulah a peanut butter sandwich while she screamed and kicked in her room. When I finished making the sandwich, I went up to Tallulah's room, took her by the hand, wordlessly brought her downstairs to the table. I set the timer on the oven and said, "You have fifteen minutes for dinner. When the timer goes off, it's time to go upstairs, brush your teeth, and go to bed whether you've finished eating or not."

The timer went off, Tallulah ran for the couch cushions to hide. I picked a couch cushion up off her head and she started screaming, "No! I'm not going to bed!" I picked her up, took her to the bathroom for teeth brushing. She stopped screaming and declared, "I'll brush my own teeth!" I gave her the toothbrush and waited. Waited as she looked at herself in the mirror, waited as she twirled a few twirls, waited as she examined her toenail. Then I took the toothbrush and brushed the front two teeth for two seconds while she-- you guessed it-- screamed. Then to bed.

Normally I would have gotten angry with myself: we went to the park too close to dinnertime, she didn't get a good nap, I could have brought a snack. Then I would have gotten angry at Kent: why didn't he bring a snack? Why are we having dinner so late? I'm realizing that I've always believed that if I plan well enough, have enough foresight, I can set my family up to succeed. To behave perfectly. And let me tell you-- this is a lot of pressure.

For the past few months I've been getting an inkling of how destructive and counterproductive this outlook is; I've been short tempered, exhausted, scatterbrained. I spend more time making my to-do lists than actually doing things. By the time I finish thinking about the things I need to accomplish, I'm depressed, tired, and anxious. Instead of bringing the control and sanity I wanted, my to-do lists were keeping me from my activities. And worse, I spent all my time figuring out how to do the next item on my list instead of paying attention to the task immediately in front of me. So I would schedule play time with Tallulah, but I would be thinking about the phone call I needed to make or when to start dinner instead of the pleasure of our game.

So I've been working on it. Last night when Tallulah was acting like a crazy woman all over our neighborhood, I forced myself to stop thinking about how it could have been avoided. Getting the family home was the activity of the moment. An embarrassing, sweaty, annoying moment. And instead of being angry with myself and snarky with my husband, we put Tallulah to bed, congratulated ourselves on not strangling our child, and had a grown up dinner with wine and no conversations about Iceman and Firestar's secret identities. And we even finished our meal and a whole conversation before Moxie woke up with a fever and commenced her own screaming.