Let go my EGO.
"Noooooo!" Screams an almost 3-year old 2-feet from her father's face. "Yes!" Father concedes to the game. "No daddy!" She is in control now. "Hey, we are getting this shirt on because I said so." Because, well, I said so, and I am an adult right, so I must know best, father knows best, right? The game all parents are familiar with, a tug-of-war in words, where a child's ability to take on all possibilities of a situation, including downright refusal, exposes a parent's weakness. "Look, a butterfly." As she picks her cup up, distracting either herself, or dad, neither of us really know. "Sweetheart." Dad is calmer now. "We have to get dressed, we don't want to be naked do we?" Yes, rhetorical questioning because, duh, right? Wrong. "Daddy, I want milk." She asks, and my first thought is, where is that milk? Only to come right back to, hey, wait a minut...