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Parental Fail
Well, I’d add a “volume” number to the end of that title because it surely isn’t the first, but I am about to confess to a parenting heart attack of epic proportions. The circumstances weren’t really anyone’s fault, but I feel like my panic-stricken paralysis was definitely a major parental fail. Yeah, another fabulous mea culpa post – consider yourself warned.
What is this all about, you ask? Well, during the fabulous post-Christmas Vegas extravaganza, the tribe migrated over to the Forum shops at Caesar’s to do a little shopping and have lunch at Cheesecake Factory. Now, for those of you that have been there, you know that rotunda area around the huge salt water tank is usually majorly packed with people looking at the fish, or waiting for the statue show, or whatever.
That day was no exception…it was so crowded that it was difficult to even wade through the masses to the restaurant. K of course ran straight to the fish tank to ogle all the critters, and parked herself in a prime viewing area on top of the marble bench. At various times during the restaurant wait, tabs were kept on her by me, Aunt Carole, and/or Uncle Bubba. So I want to make it clear that she was in fact thoroughly supervised.
And yet, when we began the shuffle in to the restaurant for seating, I tried to hold her hand and guide her through the crowd. She uncharacteristically pulled away from me and said something like “NO MOM, don’t crush my treat!” Well, that quickly got my attention because none of our tribe had given her any kind of food…so she opened her hand to reveal some small, green, sticky looking glob of indeterminate origin. I started to freak out and question her about where she found it; envisioning her vaccuuming up partially-digested snail food from the floor or something.
She reported that someone “gave it to her”, which then started off a whole new set of alarm bells in my head. Upon prompting for further details, she was adamant that a “big person, an adult” had given it to her, which naturally ratcheted up my impending heart attack yet another notch. At that point, we got swept along in the current of people to the restaurant where I was finally able to talk to Aunt Carole and ask if she knew anything about the situation.
This is where the parental fail part comes in, because both FF and I felt pretty paralyzed and couldn’t figure out what to do. We just kept looking at each other, back and forth, and at her, and at the sticky green glob, and I just couldn’t think what to do next. I had horrible visions in my head of poisons, drugs, biological warfare, stomach pumpings, etc etc. It was one of those surreal, horrific moments that feel like they go on forever.
Well, thank god for Aunt Carole because she sprang into action and very logically decided to go ask the kids and adults near the area where K had been sitting and watching the fish. As it turned out, this European grandma type character was handing out these “candy treats” to her grandkids and kindly shared one with K. Aunt Carole observed that the other kids did not appear to be keeling over or needing their stomachs pumped, so we breathed a collective sigh of relief and moved on. But it was a chilling incident that I’m sure will stay with me forever. And yes, we’ve had a very specific and serious come-to-jesus talk with K about the many nuances of stranger danger and related situations.
Thank whatever powers that be that it turned out to be an innocuous situation, but I can’t help but berate myself for my lack of ability to think quickly and react. What if every moment had counted for the health and safety of my child? Paralysis isn’t an option. Well, I guess I’ll choose to treat that as a training opportunity, and hope that in the future, I’ll be more competent and decisive than your average bowl of jello.
Tantrum of Epic Proportions
OK, maybe “epic” isn’t really the word. But it definitely was bad enough to rank up there in the official parental memory registry of Incidents That Shall Not be Forgotten. Like that time at Safeway over the kid-cart shaped like a truck. Where she screamed so hard and so long that she lost her voice for the next day. Or that time at Sam’s Club where I had to traverse the football-field-like store bodily carrying a kicking, screaming, fighting, spitting, toddler. Or that horrific time we were at a restaurant and her screeching/crying/yelling over not being allowed to rearrange furniture actually drove other customers away.
Isn’t it AWESOME to be a parent?
And why did our nearly 4-year-old dear daughter not give us a memo that 2-year-old-worthy tantrums were still on the table of viable behavioral options? Now granted, she was a little tired and hungry prior to our shopping expedition, AND she has been trying on some new developmental game faces lately, but STILL.
So we blindly went off to Fresh & Easy last night to gather a few groceries. Usually K is a very good shopper for her age. We rarely have problems. I guess the first tipoff was that she obstinately insisted that we buy plums. OK, now, that seems pretty trivial, right? But consider that a) we had already selected 4 other types of fruit to purchase, and b) she doesn’t even EAT PLUMS. Anyway, it set the stage.
The major issue of contention was that she wanted to buy some potato chips. Generally we try to minimize the amount of junk food we buy, but try not to make anything particular into a “forbidden fruit” type war. So sometimes, we let her have some Sun Chips or whatever. But last night, it just wasn’t on the food agenda. Normally, she is pretty laissez faire about the whole “we are not buying that today” thing. Occasionally we’ll get a token protest but overall, she has trained us to not expect outright mutiny.
And to be honest last night she was mostly just complaining about it at first, and then we went to check out. Fresh & Easy uses only the self-scan stations, which is great because she likes to help hand stuff over and scan it – cool, right? But last night she was insistently and LOUDLY demanding to do it all herself, and rapidly accelerating into the tantrum DANGER ZONE. She got angry every time we tried to show her how to line up the barcode with the scanner. Compounded with the potato chip indignity, it was too much and she rapidly melted into a crying, screaming, mess. For some ungodly reason, to emphasize her suffering, instead of using the usual “mad” cry, she tried out a new version: screaming at the top of her lungs, like you might expect from a child getting their arm cut off with no anesthesia. Coupled with the biggest crocodile tears I’ve ever seen from her, we parental units then encountered some of the most memorable and epic “stares” from people that we’ve ever received. Ya’ll parents out there, you know what I’m talking about.
Well, somehow we managed to keep our zen and resist the urge to strangle/yell at her give her reinforcement. She screamed and cried all.the.way.home.
Next post topic: the good stuff that makes it all worth days like this. (or something along those lines, to you know, balance out my frame of mind. Parenting Yin and Yang, right?)
Another Proud Parental Moment
So, at the girls’ preschool, they have these 1-way mirrored observation rooms. Now, while that might sound rather interrogation-spyish, they serve several purposes. One is to allow anxious parents (ahem, me) to stop in and peek in on the kidlets without interrupting their little industrious activities.
It just so happened one fine day a few weeks ago, that both FF and I were there to pick up the girls after school, and we arrived a few minutes early. So we stopped into the observation room to see what the kids were up to. After a few minutes, the observation room started filling up with other early parents. And then the kids went into their closing circle where they usually sing a song or whatever before lining up to leave. On this particular day, the perky grad students broke out a CD, put it in the stereo and got all the kids up to dance to some pop-upbeat-dancing-type-song. I must have accidentally had a touch of amnesia (or blacked out for a few minutes) because I can’t recall the exact song but…
K took a little coaxing to get up and dance, I think because she was pretty tired that day. Once she was on her feet, she entertained herself for the first minute just watching the other kids. The teachers started to urge her to dance, whereupon she initiated the most ungodly booty wiggle you have ever seen. I swear, not a single body part on that girl moved except her hips and rear. How is that even possible?
And so there we were, standing a mere 4 feet away (on the other side of the spy mirrors) with about 10 other parents who immediately started gasping and giggling at our mini booty prodigy. How does she learn this stuff?!
Yes, another proud, proud, parental moment.
