Have you ever stood at the bottom of a climbing play structure at an indoor playground and watched as your child laughed at you from the top and in sheer joyful defiance refused to come down? Welcome to my Saturday night last week.
Have you ever repeatedly asked your child to pay attention and listen to the swim teacher only to watch him repeatedly ignore the teacher while defiantly spending most of the class examining the underwater view through his goggles? Welcome to my Wednesday night this week.
Defiance. It's a wonderfully fun phase.
There is a tremendously long list of things that they don't tell you when you plan to have a child. People will tell you that you will love your child beyond words. And they are right, there are not words enough to describe that love. But they don't tell you that your heart will be permanently walking around outside your body. They don't tell you that you will never again have a completely peaceful night of sleep because you will always be listening for them calling for you and even if you get a night away you will be listening for your cell phone to ring summoning you to pick them up. They don't tell you how many times you will worry that the cough they are developing will turn into pneumonia and that you will learn the difference between the colors of their snotty nose.
They don't tell you that you will start a mental list of all the places that your child has had a meltdown either from exhaustion or because they have entered a lovely new phase of exerting their independence. I commend my little man on his new independence but until that independence can allow him to drive himself to his job that pays for his mortgage, I will have to just add the indoor playground and the swim lesson to my list of places where I have uttered the words, "Mister, if you don't be a good listener then......"
Defiance. Fun times.
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