Our First Fight

My little daughter is two years old. When she wakes up in the morning, her breath smells like cake frosting. She has the tiniest sticks for arms and legs, and silly little hands and feet, a big giant unruly head on top of a scrawny little neck you can sniffle in to make her laugh. Flossy hair, pearly teeth, she is a confection. She likes shoes, fairies, and ribbons, and puppies, and she asks strangers earnestly if they like her dress. She has never done anything to make me think she needed discipline, until last week. Last week, however, the "Time out" fairy came to call.

I recognized a while ago that I had a complete double standard with her and Benny. Benny had had plenty of discipline by age two, for hanging from the DVD tray, for dumping out the cat box, for purposefully and repeatedly ignoring my directions in dangerous and life-threatening ways involving electricity, heights, and strange dogs. I had to be more strict with him, somehow. Maybe because he was a boy. Maybe because he was just more nervy, more directly oppositional, more dangerous. I had seen myself draw the line with Benny and I thought I should do it with Sadie but when? So what if she threw a toy, or ordered me to get her book instead of asking… I joked that I was turning her into a tiny tyrant. My husband and I speculated on what my limit would actually be. What would she finally do that would push me into enforcing consequences?


As it turned out, I drew the line over a bare bottom. When she refused to put her diaper on. Last week Monday, she decided the diapers were an inconvenience she was no longer willing to suffer. I offered the potty as an alternative, and that was rejected. I offered pull-ups. Rejected firmly, with the tiny hands oustretched and a firm, “No, Mommy, NO.” Whenever I put the diaper on, she took it off. Well, in this era of peace and plenty, where the fruit snacks hang in clusters in the pantry and the apple juice flows like a river, you still have to put your waste in the right receptacle. We just had the carpet done, for heaven’s sake. So there was the battle. She planted her tent on the hill of the recalcitrant nudity. And I planted my tent on the opposite one. The one where little girls don’t tinkle all over the floor.

The battle raged for 45 minutes. It went like this: Clarify your expectations (pants). Clarify the consequences (time out). Follow up. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Sadie, I put you on the step because you wouldn’t wear your pants. Now it’s time to put them on. NO MOMMY NO. She howled, she wailed, she rent her garments, she put ashes on her head, but she stayed on the spot. She didn’t waver. Forty five minutes and almost 20 repetitions later, she finally gave in. I heard the magical words, “Okay Mommy.” We put the pants on, we had lunch, we played, we went down for a nap. And it was over.

Stupid, to wage such a war with a tiny little angelic button nose child, over wearing pants? No. The topic is irrelevant – what matters are the terms. When she finally tried to raise up her head and really oppose me, really test her strength, she could not win. If she wins the silly battles over pants, she wins the important ones about getting down off that ladder, or stopping on the sidewalk, or whatever. I’m not fooling myself – I know there will be other battles. I’m not done. But it’s good to know that the same resolve that has taken me through six years of Benny is still available for my sweet little candy-colored angel baby girl. She deserves it my A game, and I’m bringing it.