Defeat

The job of a mother is to instruct, lead, mold. We teach our children right from wrong-- not only a healthy fear that prevents the wrong action, but ideally a good enough reason to all on their own choose right. We are raising beautiful children into truly good adults, this is our primary function, this is our main objective-- to send the child, unbroken, into the world as the best adult we can teach them to be. In some way, our job is really only to save the entire the world via the tools we give our children to build their own place in it.

Today, I failed in that seemingly simple job.

I didn't argue, I didn't explain, I didn't reason. I looked at her, saw what she was doing, and knew that she would hear nothing I had to say to contradict her action. She looked at me, and she knew it too, smirked condescendingly as I told her what I did. She heard the surrender in my voice, and she was relishing every second of it when I didn't say "Stop that right now young lady, you know that is not OK, we've talked about this before!", and she was delighted as I told her this instead:

"Please chew your toenails on the rug if you're going to do it standing up, if you fall on this floor you're going to hurt yourself."

Some days, I still can't believe I got away with it... I can't believe they gave me a child.