Testy

It's not all puppies and roses with Delphine. She's testing us all the time lately, on matters both trivial and not. This morning we wanted her to be quiet so she wouldn't wake up Cordelia, and instead she screamed "I don't want to be quiet!" Cordelia woke up, I got really mad at Delphine. So I pinched her.

I don't want to admit that, because some people think I'm such a great mother, but I have to be honest. There are people who read this blog who have crazy kids (like mine), who have trouble handling their anger, who have made parenting mistakes, and to sit here and act like Delphine is always good and I am always cool and perfect would be a disservice to them and to the whole concept of talking about parenting.

I wasn't cool — I was really really angry because it was 5:30 in the morning and I wanted Cordelia to stay asleep and Delphine picked that stupid time to see if we were serious about the "be quiet" thing.

I didn't pinch her all that hard, but I wanted to. This isn't the first time I have wanted to hurt her because I was angry, but it's the first time I ever did it. I hope it's the last. I have a horrible temper and Delphine is trying it more and more lately. Hopefully this testing phase will pass quickly, but of course there will be other irritating phases in the future. As is always the case on all those parenting shows, the problem that needs to be fixed is me.

Anyway, now Delphine is happily reading books to her Daddy, none the worse for her experience. I just hope I can keep the ratio of good parenting to appalling mistakes high enough that she is always resilient enough to bounce back so easily from my bad behaviour.