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Ha! Oh, that’d be a little hard to take– but I get it. I think people overstate, sometimes, the Power of Instinct, like somehow little kids and animals are so “pure” and can just Know people’s Intentions and all– no way man! Kids are just people, and sometimes people have irrational likes and dislikes.
Farmbaby goes through phases where I am Persona Non Grata with her, to an extent– she definitely likes Middle-Little better than me, and some of that, I think, is that Middle-Little is around more frequently but less intensively– she lives nearby, so she comes over regularly, but never stays overnight at the house– and also, Middle-Little has way more experience with kids than me, and so more patience and a lot more tricks up her sleeve at getting them to do things they don’t want to. I have to come at it from an adult perspective of “ok, this person doesn’t know manners so that extremely rude thing they did was not meant to be rude, also this person doesn’t know logic so that illogical thing they did was clearly not meant to have the obvious affect that it did, so… where do we go to start over, hang on–” whereas she’s already like “hm, three, I can definitely make this a Tickle Game and distract to re-engage.”
So, my feelings get a little hurt when Middle-Little gets more love than me, or when Only Mommy Will Do, but I also, like you, can be the adult and let Farmbaby just be a person on her own time and come around if she comes around.
I have a very healthy, I think, family, in this respect– my mother and her brother never really got along, but as adults they had a very measured “well, we just don’t click, so we’ll still hang out but in the company of other people, and if we get on each other’s nerves, we’ll just leave the room and try again later” and I grew up thinking of that as normal– sometimes, people don’t get along, and it’s nothing bad about either of them, so you don’t have to force anything, you just have to use manners. (On his deathbed, my uncle said, of my mother, “We’re from the same city, but it’s like we’ve always lived on different planets,” and a bit later, barely coherent, told her, “You know, I’ve never liked you much, but of course I love you,” which is about the sweetest thing he ever said to her. She got a huge life insurance settlement when he died, and tearfully told us all she’d rather have him back than the money, would rather he’d had the money and spent it on something he wanted; they spent all parties in different rooms, and bickered over trivial things, but he was her only sibling. At his funeral, people my mother didn’t know came up and spoke to her about all kinds of details about her life, and her children’s lives, because my uncle apparently was proud of her and us and spoke of us constantly. She had no idea. People still recognize me as his relative and speak fondly of him; it’s been at least five years since he passed.)
Kids are just people, and they’re pretty much born with all the major features of their personalities, they just have to assemble the owner’s manual. And that includes preferences and the like. It’s wonderful to let them kind of form their own paths to things.
But sometimes you do kind of have to chase them down and pry them off the cat and put shoes onto them regardless of their opinions on the matter. And sometimes they’re possessed shrieking aliens for no goddamn reason and there’s not much you can do about it until they decide to grow the fuck up.
Ha! Oh, that’d be a little hard to take– but I get it. I think people overstate, sometimes, the Power of Instinct, like somehow little kids and animals are so “pure” and can just Know people’s Intentions and all– no way man! Kids are just people, and sometimes people have irrational likes and dislikes.
Farmbaby goes through phases where I am Persona Non Grata with her, to an extent– she definitely likes Middle-Little better than me, and some of that, I think, is that Middle-Little is around more frequently but less intensively– she lives nearby, so she comes over regularly, but never stays overnight at the house– and also, Middle-Little has way more experience with kids than me, and so more patience and a lot more tricks up her sleeve at getting them to do things they don’t want to. I have to come at it from an adult perspective of “ok, this person doesn’t know manners so that extremely rude thing they did was not meant to be rude, also this person doesn’t know logic so that illogical thing they did was clearly not meant to have the obvious affect that it did, so… where do we go to start over, hang on–” whereas she’s already like “hm, three, I can definitely make this a Tickle Game and distract to re-engage.”
So, my feelings get a little hurt when Middle-Little gets more love than me, or when Only Mommy Will Do, but I also, like you, can be the adult and let Farmbaby just be a person on her own time and come around if she comes around.
I have a very healthy, I think, family, in this respect– my mother and her brother never really got along, but as adults they had a very measured “well, we just don’t click, so we’ll still hang out but in the company of other people, and if we get on each other’s nerves, we’ll just leave the room and try again later” and I grew up thinking of that as normal– sometimes, people don’t get along, and it’s nothing bad about either of them, so you don’t have to force anything, you just have to use manners. (On his deathbed, my uncle said, of my mother, “We’re from the same city, but it’s like we’ve always lived on different planets,” and a bit later, barely coherent, told her, “You know, I’ve never liked you much, but of course I love you,” which is about the sweetest thing he ever said to her. She got a huge life insurance settlement when he died, and tearfully told us all she’d rather have him back than the money, would rather he’d had the money and spent it on something he wanted; they spent all parties in different rooms, and bickered over trivial things, but he was her only sibling. At his funeral, people my mother didn’t know came up and spoke to her about all kinds of details about her life, and her children’s lives, because my uncle apparently was proud of her and us and spoke of us constantly. She had no idea. People still recognize me as his relative and speak fondly of him; it’s been at least five years since he passed.)
Kids are just people, and they’re pretty much born with all the major features of their personalities, they just have to assemble the owner’s manual. And that includes preferences and the like. It’s wonderful to let them kind of form their own paths to things.
But sometimes you do kind of have to chase them down and pry them off the cat and put shoes onto them regardless of their opinions on the matter. And sometimes they’re possessed shrieking aliens for no goddamn reason and there’s not much you can do about it until they decide to grow the fuck up.
