The Boss of Me

Sophia, in her nascent yearnings for world domination, enlists me in pretend play where I am the subordinate and she is my superior.

“Let’s pretend I’m the mommy and you’re the baby.”

“Okay.” My voice is a bit wary, as it is likely I am agreeing to a browbeating.

“Today, we have Kick n’ Flips, baby.” Kick n’ Flips is her gymnastics class at school, where, for $400/year, she gets two turns to summersault each week.

“Okay mommy.”

“You have to wear pants.” Usually, my directive.

“NO! I don’t want to wear pants! I want to wear a dress.” Usually, her response.

Sophie replies, her voice sinister, a near-perfect imitation of me, “You have to wear pants. You can’t do gymnastics in a dress. Now, I don’t want to hear another word.”

Or she’s the teacher and I’m the student.

“Sit down, Melissa, and do your workbook.” I sit down, and she plops a book of crossword puzzles in my lap. This is a happy turn of events. I get to do a crossword puzzle while playing with her? I set to work. I just start to get into it when she rips it out of my hands.

“That’s enough!” She announces. Sophia is not a warm-and-fuzzy teacher. She’s the kind that doesn’t smile until Christmas.

“But I just started it!” I protest.

“I said you’re done,” she shrieks, mad, with the self-bestowed right to shriek at me under the guise of “educating” me.

“All right,” I sigh, defeated, and hand over the puzzle.

“Its nap time. Lie down.” Again, I feel hopeful. Any game where I get to lie down is welcome. I spread out across the couch, she tucks a stuffed raccoon in the crook of my arm and turns out the light. But no, just seconds after I lie down she flicks the lights back on.

“Okay! Nap time is over! Get up!” And then I am obliged to participate in a whirlwind of other preschool activities, as if she’s pressed the fast-forward button on our time together. Only this frenetic play goes on for hours and hours.

I guess I go to the School for Short Attention Spans.

When we are engaged in these scenarios, I sense that she needs them. Standing over her in the morning, issuing directive after directive: “Sophia, you have to stop playing now and put on your clothes. When you’re finished, go downstairs for breakfast. Please hold still while I brush your hair, etc., etc.” I feel the heat of her resentment as she staunchly refuses to do what I say. She yearns for autonomy, the ability to do what she wants, when she wants to. Play, I suppose, is a safe way of getting to wrestle back some of the control she sees me as hogging. She’s trying to assert her will over mine. To dominate me as I have dominated her.

I can relate. Certainly, as a child I had my own acute sense of powerlessness. My own resentments. But I was far more compliant, seething quietly in my journals or sneaking off elsewhere to do the things I wasn’t allowed to do. Like read Judy Blume’s Forever at my friend Christine’s house. Or eat Frosted Flakes.

Perhaps it’s healthier for her to be so openly combative? Maybe it means that she’s not swallowing down her angry feelings, only to resurface in her adolescent years as a full-scale rebellion. Sinking grades. Experimental drug use. An affair with a man twice her age.

I also wonder what role I play in all of this. If there isn’t a little retribution in dictatorial play. Tit for tat. A bit of glee in “getting me back.” Am I too harsh? Am I too insistent? Are my demands somehow turning her into a bully? Is this how she will treat other children, as she perceives she is being treated?

And then, there is a moment that sets me straight. I wake up with my eye sealed shut. Sophia finds me standing over the bathroom sink at my pink eye. “What’s wrong, Mommy?” she asks.

“I have germs in my eye that makes it really itchy.” I tell her. And without another word, she balls up toilet paper, turns on the faucet, moistens the paper and holds it out to me, “Here, mommy. Put this on your eye. It will make you feel better.” She pats my leg, gently as I do it.

Sure, she’s still taking control--she’s mothering me--but with tenderness and empathy. She’s emulating my other mother face. The mother I strive to be, as much as I possibly can. Patient. Interested. Engaged. Attune.

My boss rarely acknowledges when I’m doing a good job, but she rewards me in unexpected ways.

You Be Me, and I'll Be You

Kevin, my bearded husband, is curled up in Sophia’s toddler bed, thumb in mouth. Sophie is carefully tucking her pink blanket around him and nestling Snakey Pie in the crook of his arm.

“Here’s your Snakey Pie, baby.” She tells him. “It’s time for you to go to sleep now.”

“Okay, Mama,” Kevin says, “good night.”

“No,” Sophie says, slightly annoyed, “you’re me. You’re supposed to say, ‘But what if I have to go to the bathroom?’”

Kevin plays along. “But what if I have to go to the bathroom?” he whines.

“You have your potty and your toilet paper right here.” She instructs in a voice that sounds eerily like my own. “Now say, ‘Remember to turn on the hall light and crack the door,’” she directs.

“Remember to turn on the hall light and crack the door,” Kevin parrots.

“I will, baby. Don’t worry.” Sophie climbs on top of her art table and flips the light switch. “Good night, baby.”

“Good night, Mama.” Kevin replies.

“And now,” says Sophie, as she slips out the door, “I will sing the good-night song entirely as a duck. Quack quack quaaaaaak. Quack quack quaaaaaak,” she sings to the tune of “Lullaby and Goodnight,” her voice fading as she walks away.

A few seconds later she is back in the room, turning on the light, and saying cheerfully, “Time to get up, baby!”

She could play this game for hours. Being me. Controlling her. Who is really a him.

She is at once internalizing me: my rules, my boundaries, my affections and expressing a need to feel autonomous, to gain some control over herself. Through play, she works out her conflicted emotions about who’s in charge. She can at once recognize me as the one that holds the power and identify with me, enjoying some of that power herself. I believe this kind of play is essential for building self control.

It happens a lot now…three to four is the age for it. We can be in the car, driving, when Sophie says quite plainly:

“You be me, and I’ll be you.”

“Okay.” I say. “What should I do?”

“Turn on my music. I’ll start to sing with it. Then you tell me not to.” This is something she does to me, all the time. It’s really annoying. If I’m forced to listen to Music Together for several hours, why can’t I at least be allowed to sing with it?

I turn on her CD and she begins to sing with it, “Oranges, Lemons say the bells of St. Clemens….”

I know my part well. “NO!” I interrupt, “this is NOT singing music. This is LISTENING music.”

“Sophia,” Sophia says to me, “if you can’t be quiet, I am going to turn off your music and put on traffic music.” That’s what she calls anything that I listen to on the radio. NPR. XPN. Actual traffic.

“Noooooooooooo! I don’t want traffic music. I want MY music!”

“Then BE QUIET and LET ME SING!” she resumes singing with the music.

I let her sing, because I love the sound of her sweet little voice. “No mommy,” she tells me, annoyed, “You’re supposed to tell me to stop.”

“But I don’t want you to stop. I like listening to you sing.”

She starts to turn red, “But that’s not the way it goes!” I guess she has internalized my control-freakiness as well.

“I don’t think I want to be you, anymore.” I tell her. I don’t. I don’t like this game of being mean to her, so that she can boss me around. It’s not a dynamic I’m enjoying now, or when the roles are reversed and we are ourselves.

“But I want to be YOU!” Sophie cries.

I know, Sophie. I know.

The Power of No

Was it really just a few months ago that Sophie could only say yes?

We were amazed when she began nodding her head in assent:

Do you want more broccoli?
Yes, nodded Sophia.
Do you want to go up?
Yes, nodded Sophia.
Is it time for bed?
Yes, nodded Sophia.

It was a glorious time when no was absent from her vocabulary. She seemed to embrace every new food, every new experience, every suggestion I made. I made a point of using the “n” word very judiciously. My friends had cautioned me, if you use it to much, it loses its power. And so, aside from a gentle “no-no” as she attempted to pop another fuzzy from my comforter into her mouth, I seldom evoked it.

Then, as Sophia began to experiment with her autonomy, shaking the glass doors to the fireplace, caressing the plastic façade of the space heater, poking a curious finger at the outlet, I allowed myself a very firm, very loud “no” as a deterrent. The first couple of times I raised my voice in this manner, she immediately shrank back and cried, stricken.

It was shocking to me that not only did she obey my “no,” she was distraught at my disapproval. I watched her sob as if I had slapped her against the face, and agonized over what to do next. Console her or let her feel the full force of my condemnation? I tried to find some middle ground, letting her absorb this new information, then gently steering her in another direction.

After she had recovered, I watched her internalize the new rule. She approached the forbidden object, reached out to it, told herself, “no,” and retracted her hand. She did this over and over again until, ultimately, she abandoned the thing for good. I was satisfied. The “no,” it seemed, had served its purpose.

Then, one fateful day, I asked if she wanted a diaper change.

“No!” she told me, her eyes narrowing in a familiar gaze of fury.

It was my angry look. My “don’t touch that” expression. And now, it was being used against me.

When I told my mother the story, she said, “Your first mistake was asking her. Don’t ask. Tell.”
So, I’ve tried really hard to avoid these rhetorical questions that beget the same answer each time. But even if I say, “It’s time for a diaper change.” Or “P.U! You need a diaper change,” Sophia still exercises her right to reject my proposal.

Kevin received this information gleefully. “That’s my girl!” he chirped. “You two are really going to butt heads,” he added, still smiling.

And yes, I’m glad she has opinions. I’m glad she has harnessed the power of no. She’ll need it as one of her weapons against Spike, the sperm-doner or the “friend” who offers her a first taste of heroin. But for now, I want my sweet-tempered, agreeable little girl back. I want our days to be joyful and free of confrontation.

I want a few more months of oneness, before having to face the reality of two.