Meeting in the Middle

I am embarrassed to say that I am not great at playing with my daughter. From what I hear from other parents, that’s not uncommon, but it’s still frustrating and it gives me a pretty serious case of mom guilt. When she was a baby, it was easy. All had to do was jingle some keys or give the teddy bear a silly voice. Now things are more complicated. Don’t get me wrong, she has plenty of friends in her classes and around the neighborhood. I am happy to send her outside to play with them whenever possible. I wish that was enough, because I am usually too exhausted to play.

I get nervous when she asks me to play because she tends to get very upset if I am not playing the right way, a.k.a. reading her mind. Now, I know she doesn’t play this way with her friends. I’ve witnessed her engaged in happy wholesome cooperative play with kids her age. This angry micromanagement of play is reserved only for me (and sometimes her father). I beg her to play a board game with me where the rules are clearly defined, do an art project, or read a book. Sometimes we actually have a pretty chill time together if the mood is right.

Tonight after her friends had all gone home, I tried to get her to come with me to pick up our grocery order, but she wanted to play ring toss on the freshly mowed lawn. Ok, I thought, I’ll bite. The groceries can wait. I set up the game and she started screaming and flipping out. Apparently she had some kind of modified version of the game in mind, the rules of which she neglected to share with me.

I can think of a few reasons we were so cranky. First, the fact that neither of us had eaten an actual dinner yet. Second was bad timing. We needed time to eat, pick up the groceries, and return home before bedtime. She often waits until we have to run an errand or right before bedtime to ask me to play. She won’t take no for an answer, Then she gets mad that I am rushing her. It’s a vicious cycle.

Getting out the door tonight was especially hard. We stopped and got something to eat, then picked up our grocery order. Before retiring home, she asked me to take a walk around the fountain. She was referring to a man made lake out in front of this office park. It has a water feature with color changing lights.

We had been there before once during the day. We brought stale bread for the ‘ducks’ (mostly angry Canadian geese). We decided not to go through with it after seeing signs warning us not to feed the wildlife. Besides, feeding the ducks stale bread is not cool anymore. Apparently, bread is very bad for their health. Nowadays they suggest using frozen peas or grapes cut in half to feed our feathered friends.

The real attraction was down in the water. This place has koi the size of canned hams. I guess not everybody obeys the signs! I admit to sneaking a few crumbs to the koi just to watch them swim up with their lips poking out of the water. My daughter and I were very captivated by these funky orange mutants.

That was the place during the day. It was probably a different story after dark. Besides, we now had a trunk full of frozen food. But I thought it might be a nice way for us to end the day given the trouble we had earlier. I figured the food would last another twenty or thirty minutes and what’s a little trespassing when you’ve got a feisty eight year old to entertain.

The weather was a perfect seventy five degrees and the walk around the lake was actually quite lovely. My daughter held my hand. Who knows how much longer that will last. I was a hundred percent certain we were walking through piles of goose poop, but it was worth it. We sat on top of a stone wall to watch the fountain change colors from blue to teal, green, yellow, orange, red, magenta, purple and back again. I like to think of it as ‘low key fireworks.’ Instead of going boom you get the sound of rushing water and you don’t have to crane your neck to look at them. It’s a beautiful thing.

It’s moments like these when I remember to chill out. Sure, I’m stressed. Parenting is hard, but if I can meet my daughter in the middle like this more often, maybe we’ll be okay. Because I was willing to go out on a limb for her and do something that was purely her initiative, she felt validated. She needed that. After the thirty minutes were up and it was time to go, she happily got back into the car without protest. I am going to take it as a win.

If you liked this, here are some other stories I've written about my parenting adventures.