My six year old is one of the most self-confident, strong-willed people that I have ever met. Phrased slightly differently, but just as accurately, she is one of the most stubborn, argumentative people that I have ever met. Which description I use can vary from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. The line between pride and exasperation sometimes a thin one.
Other days, days such as today, I’m convinced that she is consciously disagreeing with everything that I say in an effort to drive me completely insane.
7:00 AM – Refused to believe that it was actually time to get up, citing as evidence a plastic cuckoo clock rescued from her grandmother’s basement that has been stuck at 10:00 since the early 1990’s.
7:15 AM – Demanded cereal with milk for breakfast instead of the waffle and strawberries that were on her plate. When informed that we were out of milk she insisted that coffee creamer was a perfectly adequate substitute.
7:30 AM – Decided that she liked this outfit for school much better than the more reasonable one that we had agreed to before bed the night prior.
7:45 AM – Didn’t think that it was cold enough to warrant wearing a sweatshirt. As I had just come inside after giving the dog a quick potty break, there was obviously no way for me to be sure what the current weather conditions were.
7:48 AM – She told me black socks don’t match with blue sneakers and refused to wear them.
8:00 AM – Spent the entire ride to school arguing about the lyrics to Adele’s “Water Under the Bridge”, a song she was singing very loudly in the backseat. In retrospect, I should have let this one go. I’m not convinced I have them right either, but I’m pretty sure “say it ain’t so” is the only line that she had correct.
3:15 PM- Still didn’t think it was cold enough for a sweatshirt despite a steady rain falling.
3:25 PM – Tried to convince me that we were going to run out of gas and have to walk home if we didn’t stop at the station, preferable the one where the attendant always gives her a lollipop.
6:00 PM – Didn’t want chicken breast, wanted “chicken on the bone.” Couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t go buy some.
6:30 PM – Needed to rearrange the silverware drawer because I “had it all wrong.”
7:00 PM – Declared herself perfectly capable of running her own bath and washing her own hair. Deeply insulted that I didn’t trust her enough to let her try, threatened to not speak to me for the rest of the evening.
7:10 PM – Asked for a snack. Didn’t like her choices.
7:30 PM – Didn’t understand why she couldn’t have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as her bedtime story. She likes dragons, likes tattoos, is big enough to not need picture books anymore. At this point I’m just assuming that she is messing with me.
8:00 PM – Its not fair that she has to sleep in her own bed. Our bed is much more comfortable and she wakes up much earlier in it. Not helping your cause any with that one, kid.
8:15 PM – “You’re not thirsty, and no, you can’t have a sip of daddy’s drink.”
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Previously published on thirstydaddy.com.
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