I have my worst moment as a parent

Well, there's no other way to put it. That's what I did.

The morning began well enough. Maia joined us in bed, and was playful. She wanted me to get up--"Can we wake up, now?"--she will say.

Kristina woke up, but Maia didn't want Kristina to get up. "You stay in bed," she said.


"She wants a c-o-o-k-i-e," Kristina said.

I nodded. Maia has been cajoling a chocolate covered, short bread cookie out of me in the morning, out of a box I got as a present. The cajoling wouldn't work with Kristina.



I went down. I've had problems at work, and I was thinking about those. I could hear that there were issues upstairs, but I didn't think much of it.

Maia came down and joined me. Then Kristina came down and was frustrated with Maia over whatever had happened upstairs. All I could make out was that Maia had insisted that Kristina do things in a certain way, but no way that Kristina did them was the right way. Maia does that sometimes. Insists that you behave in a certain way and whines and becomes insistent when you don't.



I went outside, and Maia followed. I thought that that might help to ratchet things down.

We have signs up just outside the wall around our house that give notice that we have a security system. The two signs from the right side of our frontage were lying on the driveway.



"Maia, why do you keep pulling those out?" I said. Maia saw that I was looking to see whether the last one was still up--on the left side of the frontage--and took off towards it.

"Maia, don't," I said. "Leave it there. Maia, don't."

She looked at me, but just kept working the sign out of the ground.

I was angry with her by this point. I turned away and walked back into the yard. I was looking for a little spot under a guava tree where I've planted a clutch of impaties. It's colorful and sweet, and it relaxes me just to look at it.



Maia appeared in front of me, brandishing the sign in my face and blocking my way. The sign is a pentagon attached to a rod. Kristina told me later that she pretends that the signs are the stop signs that the JPOs at her school use in the morning to control traffic.

"Get out of my way," I said.

When she didn't, I shoved her, and she fell and started to cry. I picked her up and carried her around, trying to console her.

Not my best moment.



Later that morning, I was lying in bed. I had been checking email on my laptop to see whether there was anything new in the situation at work. Maia came in to get something.

"Maia," I said, "I'm very sorry that I pushed you this morning."

"It's okay, Daddy," she said.

But it wasn't.



These pics were from later in the day--dinner tonight at a Chinese restaurant. And then a pic at home. Kristina and Maia were practicing word pattern recognition.

It's school again. She was wonderful last week when she was off. Since she's been back, she's full of rebellion and defiance again. So difficult--she wants to control us, and that frustrating to all of us. Still, no excuse for shoving her.

John, Saturday, October 13, 2007