I’m dredged from sleep at 3am by the sounds of wailing from outside the room, and a resigned groan from right next to me.
“What’s going on?”
Is all I manage to produce from the murk.
“Oh god, it’s all nonsense. I’ve been up twice already. She’s just awake and in one of those moods, you know. Trying to control stuff that’s already happened.”
We’ve been here before.
The “YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE IT THIS WAY AND YOU DIDN’T AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!” response. A sort of five year old’s version of the Kobayashi Maru test. You can’t win, so the quicker you get your inevitable demise over with, the better.
“I’ll go,”
I sigh, dragging myself out of bed and into her room, where the drama is elevated to new heights because she doesn’t want this parent, she wants the other one.
In the past, sleep deprived and disoriented, I’d have played the I’m-bigger-than-you card and gone in wielding authority as my weapon of choice. Get in bed. Stop this fuss. Do you know what time it is? That sort of thing.
I’d then watch, helplessly, as things spiralled out of my control. We’d go to actions and consequences. Threats of privileges withdrawn if she didn’t shape up. “No TV tomorrow” might work for a bit, but then the caterwauling would start up again in the dark and I’d have to drag myself back out of bed, this time accompanied by the realisation I’d just guaranteed a similar flare up later that day, when I had to follow through on my rights-revoked ultimatum.
I’d get cross. She’d be screaming. I’d be yelling. All at three in the morning. And however it got resolved, I’d be awake for the rest of the night, adrenaline pumping, mind churning. Why did these things happen? What the hell could I do differently? What sort of state am I going to be in tomorrow, now?
These days, however, I enter these situations armed with the following four facts, that help me to resolve any such fraught situation: