Darling Daughter is a Diva.  She is deep, emotional and prone to outbursts that frequently see her stomping up the stairs and slamming doors and sobbing.  Complete mystery where she got these traits (said nobody ever).

She is most certainly her mother’s child.

My husband is renowned for having zero tolerance for her dramatics, whining, baby talk, and many more of Stephanie-Jane’s less than winning ways.  He’s much better at managing, understanding and dealing with the boys antics, while generally, I have a much longer fuse when coping with our daughter.

So on Friday night, something set her off and the obligatory stomp up the stairs, followed by the slam, and then the scream occurred.  Normally, I give her ten or fifteen minutes and head up and we have a good talk and a cuddle.  She craves comfort when her emotions get away on her like this, and generally calms down and gets on with life pretty quickly after one of these little blow-ups.

But this time, it was Grumpy who went up.

Sometime later, he came back downstairs to tell me how it went.

“So our daughter has had her first existential crisis.” He reported to me plainly.

“Oh?” I said raising an eyebrow. “You mean the one where she raises her little hands to the sky, throws her head back, and between sobs exclaims ‘Who AM I!  I just don’t know who I am anymore!’ because that’s the crisis of existentialism she’s generally prone to after on of her stompy sessions.” I responded.

“Yeah, that one.”  He smiled.

“Pretty deep territory eh.  I just tell her that I have no idea who I am or what I’m doing most of the time and cuddle her till she calms down.  What did you say?” I asked.

“Well.  I explained that we are what we do.  So, if we do kind things, we are kind.  If we do mean and terrible things, we are probably quite mean and terrible.” He repeated to me in his very best soft and thoughtful dad tone;  “So, if you play a concert piano in front of a large crowd, then you are most likely a concert pianist because you practiced and promoted yourself as such.  If you do all the things that need to be done to become the Prime Minister, and then you become the Prime Minister, then you are probably the Prime Minister.  Or if you make lots of bad decisions and do lots of dumb things and end up being really unhappy most of the time, it is actually because we are what we do.  And I told her she does lots of great things and is a kind and wonderful girl that we are proud of.  So she’ll probably be alright.”

“Wow.”  I responded.  “You win parenting this weekend for that little gem baby.”  I said all moon eyed and swooning a bit after hearing this.  “Do you think she got it? Do you think it helped?”

“Yeah, I think it did.”

And that is how Grumpy won parenting this weekend.

Have a great week everyone.

XXOO

Dee