Parenting a Willful Toddler

I cleaned up some of her toys while she didn’t but agreed to. I told her she needed to clean the rest up. She screamed “no!” And then proceeded to copy my every “go clean up the toys,” or, “you agreed to this,” or, “get your butt over there right now and clean up your toys.” Hand motions and all. Like, audacious and bitchy and with authority that no kid “should” have.

I wanted to absolutely lose my shit on her. This has been not an occurrence but a state around these parts lately.

She was merely reflecting to me what she was seeing. As an empath, I should know better.

So when I noticed that what she was doing was natural to her, not rebellious to me, rather than stand above her and try to get her to do “me,” I decided to soften, walked to her, held her hand, knelt down to get eye level with her and whispered, “look. There’s a whole room here that needs to be cleaned, let’s do it.”

She looked around, looked at me at her level, looked around again and said, “go!”

And SHE did it. And with the same sense of audacity and authority she refused to do it with earlier. Only because I met her rather than expected my trying-very-hard-to-figure-it-our four year old to come to me.

As always, I ache to love her. As always, she teaches me not how to love, but how to “be” loving. 💝