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| I'm so proud! Look at the words sounded out - "SOBH" for sorry, "ADICST" for asked... It's so exciting to see our child's expression in writing!! |
This here is the Sorry Note that I was presented with most forlornly (and not a little manipulatively by my tongue-in-cheek smirking) four year-old daughter yesterday.
The events leading up to Sorrygate were your usual Sunday afternoon home life antics:
Mum and Dad, in kitchen, trying to work out about half a dozen things at once. Also hoping desperately to hear each other over the din of their dear-born, making as much noise as a classroom of roudy children on a Friday afternoon. Mum snaps, says to child, "Oh for heaven's sake, would you PLEASE go and find something to do! Just for ten minutes!" Child walks away, arms by sides, not swinging, shoulders slumped and feet dragging ever so slightly for added effect.
At moments like these, I do not go after my child and placate. I can't. I have to give it a few minutes at least and then, more often than not, I go down to her and sidle in while she's playing. It's rare, for she is usually with me, nagging to be entertained, every minute of the day when she is here. We are still trying fervently to explain that there are days, particularly during the long stretches of weekends, where she needs to learn to amuse herself using her own imagination. That it's important she does this.
Yada-yada. We're still hoping it'll sink in.
So then. The note comes. By way of a morose-looking (but ever so cheeky still) LGBB, presenting it to me and telling me it says:
Mum. Sorry I asked for food. (name). Happy birthday.
Well just plunge a knife in my heart and be done with it, why don't you! (By the way, it's not my birthday, it's just something the LGBB likes to offer, it's her version of "Have a nice day!") Asking me for food, were you? How was I to know, when I was listening to another adult and trying to make a coherent reply and push that little nagging voice to the side for thirty seconds?! How was I to know that you needed food so badly that you had to ask for it while jumping and jiggling and writhing around as though you'd already eaten a bowl full of jellybeans and downed a litre of red cordial?!
Grrrrrr.
The rest of the afternoon passed by relatively peacefully. And I am just quietly ever so proud of our girl. Her first 'letter' to someone! Pity it was to highlight my apparent shortcomings as a parent.....
