I would be arrested. 

It sometimes seems to me that if I followed though on some of the more exotic impulses that my daughter engenders in me I would be arrested.  From the moment of her conception my daughter has seemed to walk her own path.  As a parent I’ve heard it said that you do your best parenting before you have kids.  I have to agree.  Before I had kids I knew with every fiber of my being that I’d have well behaved, polite, demure but strong, happy, intelligent, well-disciplined and healthy kids.  I was right, I was also wrong.

My daughter is my delight, she never ceases to amaze me how smart she is and how logical and funny and caring and loving.  It also never ceases to amaze me how bloody-minded, arrogant, pig-headed, willful, determined and downright unreasonable she is.  Half the time I’m wondering how we could ever have brought such a joy into the world and the rest of the time I’m actively planning to foist her off on someone, anyone but myself just so that I can maintain my sanity.

I spend my hours thrilled by her deductive reasoning and then in the blink of an eye my well-adjusted child becomes a nightmare child seemingly unable to allow herself to be happy.  I agonize over my parenting, wondering what else can I do, what better can I do?  What will happen when she’s a pre-teen and then a teenager?  Have we given her too much choice?  Have we coddled her too much?  How much is enough?  I don’t have the recipe.

Her teachers at Montessori school tell me she is cooperative, pleasant, and smart.  I stare at her wondering if she’ll ever show them her “other” side.  Then they inform me that when she doesn’t want to do something she doesn’t fuss or act out, she just ignores them.  Guiltily, I feel a little better.  It’s not all in my mind.  Perhaps I should feel grateful that she saves her histrionics and most unreasonable behavior for me, while presenting to the world a sweet, reasonable and shy façade.  Maybe I should look on that as her being most comfortable with me and therefore being able to be herself in all her facets.  Maybe.  But while it’s happening and I’m wondering if my child has been body-snatched leaving behind some sort of self-destructive alien I feel the urge to return to the childless days when I was so certain in my ability to parent and KNEW that I could do it well.  By the way she’s only 4 ½ years old.  My brain aches just thinking of the years to come.