I am hoping that when they debut My Older Kid 2.0, they will debug her in the following ways: First, she will notice that her words and actions are of her own doing and they sometimes have consequence for which she is responsible.
And second, she won't be so fucking selfish. Like, I was thinking of trying to run some role-play scenarios after The Toast, and then when The Quilt went down, I was definitely going to write this blog post, and then today was The Drums, and I am seriously wondering if she is under warranty.
The Toast is just one example of something she does regularly. In this case, it was with toast, which she likes. There were six slices on a plate. There are four of us. She evaluated the situation and immediately took three.
I mean... I was going to make more anyway. But read the room, kid! If there are a dozen cookies, make sure everyone gets one first before going back for seconds. If a piñata breaks, just double-check to make sure you aren't mowing down three-year-olds and taking all their candy. You will get yours, I guarantee it. You will get a fair share. Just calm the fuck down and make sure it at least looks like you care whether other people like toast, too.
The Quilt, though, really ticked me off. Background: when she was younger, she thrust a Pottery Barn catalog in my face (and Grandma's, and Boompah's) and said that this pink quilt was the epitome of all that was wonderful in the world and she'd probably die if she didn't get it. So, okay, whatever. Christmas was coming up, and she loved the quilt, so she got it.
In the meantime, I put away the old quilt of mine (from childhood) that was torn and worn and left it in the closet. She never asked for it, never played with it. I think she didn't even ever make a fort with it, and she emptied the damn linen closet to make forts.
So when I was pregnant with Lochlan, I thought, "Hey, won't that be sweet -- I'll get the blue quilt repaired and they'll both have their own quilt."
So I did. I had an old friend repair it (beautifully, I might add), and I put it on Lochlan's bed when he got his own room.
Well, now that she is a teenager (she has some tortured math and logic to make this work at age ten), she hates pink, and also her quilt is too small, and also it's itchy. It is, in fact, the worst quilt in the world, and I am a bad person for not replacing it THIS INSTANT. (Y'all, that is the short version.) And she drags out "You like Lochlan better than me" whenever she wants something (which kind of hits a nerve, because I kind of DO like him better. I love them the same, but he's easier to hang out with because he's chill and nice). So then comes her accusation that actually, she LOVED the blue quilt and ALWAYS wanted it, and I was clearly doing her a grave injustice and insult by giving this TREASURED HEIRLOOM that she has loved her WHOLE LIFE to some random kid.
"Dude," I said, "You never gave that quilt a second glance until someone else had it. You just want it because it's your brother's."
She denies this, but friends, I would stake my life on it. If, the week before I got that quilt out to send it to Kristin in Utah, I had asked Azadeh if she remembered it, she would not have. But once it was his, it had to be hers.
So I was definitely on the "how can I address this selfishness thing" train already.
Yesterday, I cleaned her room a little. I didn't throw anything (much) away, just rearranged. I talked to her about whether we could give her little-kid school desk to Lochlan and she agreed.
There's also a drum kit in there. Now, I got the drum kit for her the Christmas she was 3, I think. We had it in her room for about a year, she banged on it a handful of times, and then we put it in the garage, disassembled.
But Lochlan's kinda musical. He would sometimes use things for percussion, and one day when I was cleaning out the garage, I decided to bring the drums back in for him. Well, as soon as she saw them, she was like THOSEAREMINE! So I put them in her room instead, because it's true, they are hers.
That was at least six months ago. I showed her one or two beats, she practiced them for 2-3 minutes each, and that's been the end of it. The only time we hear the drums now is when some of her clutter falls on them.
So in the big room clean (which I did because she's been complaining about her room being too small), I moved her drums out to the living room while I decided what to do with them. Lochlan is fascinated! He's been hitting them with his hands, pencils, whatever he could find. He's using the foot pedal. He's got rhythm! So Ánt got him a pair of balsa wood chopsticks to play with on there. And him using them just set her off. Why were they out here? Those are hers! He can't touch them! Everything he touches gets gross! He's going to hurt them!
So we try to have this serious talk, and her point of view is something like this.
A: She doesn't use the kit because it is too small for her.
B: That is not a good reason to take it out of her room.
C: She doesn't practice because the drums are unacceptable.
D: She will be needing a new, adult-sized professional drum kit.
E: And Lochlan STILL can't play with hers.
And I'm like... maybe someone somewhere is willing to pay upwards of $1k to see if their kid, who has never practiced the drums before, will practice the drums in their house if they get the kid a much, much bigger set of drums. But that is not me.
I never had a sibling myself, so I don't really get the whole sibling rivalry thing. And I think if we were the kind of parents who routinely insisted that she give her stuff to the younger child, I could see getting put out. But we don't. In fact, more often than not, if Lochlan gets her stuff, it's because I asked her to choose some stuff to give to Goodwill and she doesn't really want it to leave the house, so she gives it to him.
Anyway, I can't put my finger on what it is about selfishness that really gets my goat, but it does. So seeing her ignore or reject things until Lochlan touches them pisses me right off.
About a month ago, I thought about writing down everything she asked for, like when we're in stores. Because "Ooh, can I have this? I NEEEEED it," is about her most commonly-used phrase. And I rejected the idea of doing it, because I knew I would find it both too demoralizing and too time-consuming. I don't want to use a trip to the local homeless shelter as some kind of moral-lesson-imparting tourism, but she is kind of slowly growing into a really reprehensible person. At this rate, in fifteen years she'll be running for office as a Republican.