1 Mother 2 Another

Dear Maddie:


We had a bit of a rough morning recently, didn’t we? School
mornings are never easy, but this one seemed to start out pretty
well and I had reasonably high hopes for getting you to school
relatively incident-free.


Then it came time to brush your hair.


As I approached you with the brush, you raised your arms up and
blocked me from your hair. And then I said, “Honey, you need
to let me brush your hair – and not fight me – or you
need to brush it yourself.”


I then lifted my arm up to brush again – and you pushed my
arms away.

Which is when I gently set the brush next
to you and said, “You will need to brush your own hair
now.”


I know I don’t have to go into detail on what happened next:
the crying, the begging, the screaming and jumping up and down. You
promised many rash things (“I’ll never fight you again,
I promise, just please brush my hair today!”) and tried
everything you could think of to get me to change my mind.


But I stuck by my word, and when we left the house fifteen minutes
later your eyes were red and swollen, you sadly hiccupping and
trying to stem the runny nose. And in fact, you had a difficult
time heading into class, clinging to me and sobbing again,
desperate not to leave me as you haven’t been since
kindergarten.


I tried to talk to you throughout the incident, and I can honestly
say that I never got mean or yell-y or Scary-Face Mom on you. I
stayed calm and loving, keeping myself out of this little battle
you were having, and in the end you chose to go to school with
unbrushed hair rather than brush it yourself.


I know, baby, that you were bewildered and upset and probably a
little scared that I was abandoning you somehow – that Mommy
doesn’t love you because I didn’t give in to your
begging. And I’ll admit that in the past, I have on occasion
relented and changed my mind on something when you’ve gotten
to that point. My absolutism must have seemed arbitrary and mean, I
know.


But here’s the flip side of that coin, baby: I want you to be
able to trust me, to trust my word. And I need to be able to
believe that my yes means ‘yes’ and my no means
‘no’. So I stick to my guns, which may not make me
popular, but will eventually make me reliable.


I want you to be able to come to me with secrets, with fears, and
trust that if I promise not to tell anyone else, you can count on
that. I want you to grow up feeling the comfort of your boundaries
around you, for better or for worse. If you can rely on those
boundaries and know they’ll be there, perhaps you won’t
need to test them quite so much.


Perhaps you’ll reach the point of simply trusting that they
are there, and there to help you.


It was a bad morning, kiddo. But we got through it and you
recovered and had a great afternoon. And hopefully now when you
read this- years from now, truth be told – you’ll
understand why I make those hard choices sometimes, why I come
across so inflexible sometimes.


Even on such a trivial issue as brushing your hair.


I love you, baby.


Mommy