My Little… Darling.

by Lori Dwyer on November 1, 2012 · 18 comments

My daughter is pushing me to the absolute limits of my patience at the moment. That patience is, admittedly, much shorter and finer than it once was…

But really. The child needs an exorcism. Or a multi–vitamin. Maybe a chiropractic adjustment. Something.

I am losing my f*cking mind.

The Bump turned three not long ago, and she is very much the tea party fairy princess. With attitude. And a temper as phenomenal as my own apparently once was– my mum tells me she once locked me, mid hysterics, on the verandah of our two story house, me screaming like a wild thing, banging and kicking at the door. My mum says she was only vaguely worried about me falling– or throwing myself off– because she would hear the house-shaking door kicking stop first.

Honestly, if I was anything like my Bump is right now, I think my mum would have breathed blessed relief at the half–second of silence before she even checked that I hadn’t fallen off (or shimmied myself down the closest gum tree. Either being possible.)

Child reads the Bible. Do not let her cuteness suck you in- that’s her plan.

Now, I love my daughter dearly and she is the very essence of cute. But my god, if she’s not screaming blue murder then she’s prefacing every sentence with the word ‘mum’. I’m not even exaggerating when I say I must hear that four hundred times– at least– a day. (They say the average three year old asks three hundred questions a day, and each of those today was prefaced with ‘mum’. Four hundred actually seems a conservative estimate.)

Things have escalated to the point where I hear the word ‘mum’ repeating in my head long after my kids have gone to bed, like a song going round and round and round. Instead of a song going round and round. I think I’d rather Engelbert Humpledinck.

The frustrating thing is, we’ll be in the middle of a conversation and every sentence still has to begin, and often end, with ‘mum’. (“Mum? What are we doing today Mum?”). Interactions often go something like this…

“Mum?”

“Yes, my Bumpy thing?”

“Mum?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Mum?”

“Yes darling.”

“Mum?”

“YES Bump?”

*Cue tears and cute wobbling of pouty bottom lip*

“Don’t yell at me!! You’re my best friend…”

“Yes Bump I know, but you only need to say–”

“NOOOOOOO! Please don’t be mean to me, please!”

*Cue stop, drop and scream hysterically*

It’s enough to make me feel like the worst mother in the world. Really, is it just my kids who are experts at guilt–mongering, or does every child harbor that latent ability? Do I feel worse because there’s no other adult here to bounce things off, to reassure me that she actually being disgusting and it’s not just me being mean– more a case of the Bump just being a three year old?

What on earth do you do with a child who’s afraid of dragons, who’s seems intent on destruction, who refuses to put down her hairbrush and go to sleep because she’s “having a conversation with it”?

I don’t know. I’m too frazzled to form any answers. But as of yesterday I was stressed to the point that my stomach was aching and I was near crying tears of frustration, just wanting her to stop screaming at me for five freaking minutes, please. I find myself staying up later and later just to languish and soak in the silence– I’m so stressed out by the time bath, books and bed rolls around that sleep is an abstract concept until I relax and wind down, at least a little.

Or at least until the Bumpy thing wakes again, as she does most nights, somewhere between two am and four am. For another dummy, for a glass of a milk.

Or, you know, just to scream hysterically at her bewildered, exhausted mother a bit more.