Pre-Teen Wasteland
I said at the tail end of yesterday’s post that I had thought of, but discarded, the idea of doing a post based on “Teenage Wasteland”.
I have reconsidered. I pulled that post idea out of the dustbin.
Please. Please. PUH-leeze tell me that almost-six-year-olds are demons sent to earth to torment us? Please.
I love my darling OmegaDotter. I really, truly do.
But y’know what? Awful confession time: Right now, I just don’t like being with her.
She is: snotty. Whiny. Snippy. Tantrummy. Rude. Disrespectful. Mean. Self-centered. Sassy.
Just plain horrid.
Like the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead…”When she was good, she was very, very good. But when she was bad…
“She was horrid.”
She is being so horrid that even OmegaDad, in whose eyes she can (generally) do no wrong, has decided that she is whiny, sassy, mean, rude, disrespectful, etc.
I find myself thinking that we have utterly failed. That we’ve raised a hellion. A brat. That we should never have been entrusted with raising a child, because we’re obviously so bad at it.
The worst of it? Is that, apparently, she’s just a doll at school and at before/after school care. She saves all this shit for us. Bah.
Okay, it seems worst because it’s hurtful. It’s actually not worst, because at least she’s not behaving like a snotty little brat with the rest of the world.
Then Ms. Hyde disappears for a while and Dr. Jekyll reappears, and all is sweetness and light and fun and pleasant. She hands me notes that say, “To Mommy, Love OmegaDotter”, and that have little “I ♥ you”s scattered about. She glows at me when she is done with her gymnastics class. She sings silly songs at me when we’re driving from OmegaDad’s office to her before-school place. She draws and builds elaborate creations. Bit by bit, she’s reading. She can make us laugh like crazy.
And then Ms. Hyde reappears.
My only hope is that I can recall a few younger relatives who were absolute pills at the age of five or six, and who have turned out to be model citizens and fairly nice all-around human beings as adults.
posted in Family, Frustration, OmegaDotter, Parenting | 11 Comments
