Sharing
This invaluable life lesson just smacked me in the face. I was drying my hair when I saw my precious daughter’s face round the corner.
I lit up, ‘Hey big girl, whatchadoin?’
She held up a cheap bracelet that I often wear to go out.
I asked with a bit of a puzzled expression, “Have you been in Mommy’s jewelry box?”
She shook her head up and down and says, “Yes.”
“Well, Clare, you really need to go and put that away, it’s Mommy’s and you’re not supposed to play in Mommy’s jewelry box.”
In a way only she can pull off, she looked right at me without any intention at all of putting that bracelet up. Without missing a beat she says, “Mommy Share. You have to share.”
Do what? No seriously, put those words right back in your smarty little mouth you are not allowed to use my own words against me.
“Seriously Clare, go put it back in Mommy’s jewelry box. You shouldn’t have been in there in the first place.”
“Mommmmiiiieeee, you say we have to share. You have to share!” (With little arm and hand motions accompanying this song and dance)
I was quiet while trying to figure out the best way to handle the situation. On the one hand, she was right. On the other, I could have said, “I’m your mother, do what I say. I told you to put it up.” I was stuck for a moment. You know what I actually did? I shared, and then made a mental note to move the jewelry box until she’s older and we can go through the nuances of sharing verses staying out of my stuff. It was early, coffee hadn't really kicked in yet.
Clare 1
Mommy 0
Painting
NEVER EVER buy crayola squeeze paint on sale at the craft store thinking that you’ll use it "one day, but not right now". No no, you can stuff that cat back in the bag. You buy paint, it’s coming out whether you like it or not.
A little back story, our craft boxes are now kept safely out of her reach due to a previous painting party while I was in Baltimore (it involved glitter and glue and pipe cleaners, and Daddy not knowing that we don't just sit the craft box on the table and say "Go Get 'Em").
So being the resourceful one that she is, and not one to really adhere to ‘no’ really well, Clare enlisted an innocent friend in her scheme to get to that paint while we were occupied after I had already told her ‘No’ for crafts and paints. Twenty minutes into our study, I hear the obvious sound of a tube being emptied of its contents. I excused myself to go check on the girls. Clare’s precious friend is trying to get her to stop, while Clare is sitting in a puddle of red paint literally covering her entire body from head to toe and wallowing in the joy of paint. When I say wallowing, I mean, no natural skin color left on her arms or legs and only a little left on her face. Oh, and she’s rubbing it into the hardwood floors like it’s a new fur coat. A few minutes later and an unexpected bath while friends cleaned the mess on the floor and she’s good as new and no longer resembles a future Burning Man Festival attendee.
Clare 2
Mommy 0
Friendship
Not fifteen minutes after she’s been cleaned of paint and gently scolded, she’s back in motion. This time I’m watching her bossy almost three year old self out of the corner of my eye. At one point during one of her many clandestine trips from her play room to the upstairs, I see her walking slowly from the room with something in her hand and a look of complete guilt all over her face. I call out her name and one of my friends sitting on the couch starts laughing. “What happened,” I ask. Apparently the moment I said her name, she shoved whatever it was in her hand over to her perfectly innocent companion, and came walking passed me like nothing had happened. Yep, that’s right; she was ready to throw her friend under the bus so she didn’t get caught. I apologized to her friend’s parents and made ANOTHER mental note to discuss what we do not do. Most importantly, we do not let our friends get in trouble for things we are trying to get away with (good grief).
Clare 3
Mommy 0
I decided on a good Christian book by Max Lucado for bedtime reading that had all of the elements of sharing, friendship, honesty, obeying and forgiveness in it. As she drifted off to sleep, she was smiling and I know she was not listening to me and my moral story, rather she was dreaming about her red paint.