Mommy, dotter, and OmegaMom
posted in Adoption, Family, OmegaDotter, Parenting |When GrannyJ was visiting, OmegaDotter and I would snuggle for half an hour to forty-five minutes before trekking downstairs to the family room to waken her. During one of these snuggle sessions, the dotter asked me if GrannyJ was my birthmother. When I said yes, she admitted to be intensely jealous: I could be with my birthmother, she could not.
OmegaDotter is six and a half years old. She’s at a stage where she can be loving, gentle, fun–those flashes of emotional maturity I mentioned. At the same time, she can be snotty and smart-mouthed and self-centered and just an all-around pain in the ass. A pill to be around. A constant and ongoing battle of wills.
She has even driven OmegaDad, the most gentle, easy-going man in the world, who is wrapped around her little finger, into shouting at her very angrily many times in the past few weeks.
Last night, as we were doing the bedtime routine, she was being sassy and defiant yet one more time, right as it was time for the hug-n-kiss from daddy and the feeling game from mommy. So, being the kind, gentle, calm, patient person I am…
I snapped.
I coldly and angrily proclaimed that I Had Had It and wasn’t going to take any more of it. I certainly didn’t feel like hanging around her, and if she wanted someone to be there while she went to bed, she was more than welcome to ask OmegaDad if he wanted to, though I couldn’t see why. It was time she learned to treat me and him like Real Human Beings, stop being a smart-ass all the time, stop whining all the time, I was sick and tired of it, and for all I cared, she was more than welcome to go to bed by herself. In the meantime, I was not going to be there. There was more, but I can’t remember it.
I stormed out.
I took the dawg out for his evening walk.
I read a book in the living room.
And I heard wild sobs from the bedroom.
And I…didn’t…care. In fact, I was hoping that she was utterly, absolutely, thoroughly miserable at the whole thing; maybe things would sink in when mommy was Madame Fury, rather than the ongoing, “Dotter, you need to ask in a nicer manner.”
After half an hour, OmegaDad carried her out to me. Her eyes were red, her cheeks and lashes damp with tears, her lips trembling.
“Do you want to tell her or shall I?” asks OmegaDad.
She shook her head mutely. Then she tried talking. Then she couldn’t. Then…finally…she wailed:
“I want my moooommmmmyyyy!”
Um.
Well, shit.
Okay. Y’see, she didn’t mean me. She meant her birthmother.
Which afforded us a splendid opportunity to let her know that her birthmother sure as shit wouldn’t put up with the attitude, either.
It also, frankly, left me feeling like a second wheel. Hey, what am I, chopped liver?
Oh, I know I’m not. OmegaDad is fond of saying, “I’m ice cream and cookies. You’re comfort food.” I’m the one she clings to when she’s sick or tired or needing reassurance in the world. But I really don’t want to have to constantly consider whether me getting angry at her over something and storming away is going to trigger abandonment issues (trust me, this was serious, absolute, prostrate misery on her part and not a sham).
Anyway, there we are. She’s going through a stage of pillishness. I was worried that we were absolutely, totally ruining her and she was turning into a self-centered princess who was going to drive us into misery in her teens until this morning, when I had to run her gym shoes into school (she was wearing her new cowgirl boots, and we both forgot that today was P.E.) and ran into M., her friend H.’s mom. And unprompted by me, she immediately began telling me that her daughter (a quiet, shy, gentle thing who is always perfectly mannered) is driving her absolutely batty by being sassy, smart-mouthed, defiant, argumentative.
Wait a minute! She’s talking about my dotter! Isn’t she?! And as we were commiserating, she said that yet another mom of another six year old friend of H.’s had been astonished that she (the friend) was perfectly behaved at M.’s house, because she was…sassy, smart-mouthed, defiant, and argumentative at home.
So I’m guessing it’s a stage. Ugh.
What’s also a stage is a sudden upswing in birthmother/adoption issues. Though I haven’t dipped into the Big List (Adoptive Parents China) in years, I remember that the parents of older kids described certain ages and stages, and they always seemed to be the same. Seven was when grief seemed to hit a bunch of them; nine was when anger about being abandoned seemed to hit.
This evening, at bedtime, when we were playing the feeling game, I asked her if anything made her sad today. She said, “No.” I lifted an eyebrow and peered at her. “What about last night?” I asked. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, yeah.” “Do you want to talk about it?” “Yessss…But not right now!”
Thinking she was going to evade the whole issue, I started to press on her.
“MOOOMMMY! Not. Right. Now. We have to finish the game first!”
I mentally rolled my eyes. The whole original idea behind the feeling game was to–OMG!–talk about your feelings! But, okay, so I had to wait. Sure enough, when we had gone through the whole litany (happy, sad, angry, scared, funny stuff), then she said, “Okay! Now I want to talk about it!” and she scrambled down off the bed, into my lap, with a blankie, snuggled down, and started talking about her first mother, adoption, the one-child law in China, and more. All of which made me realize that she’s actually listened to some of the things I’ve told her about…
Welcome to motherhood.
