A Friday Slam-the-Door Fest

I’m not 100% sure that my 11-year-old daughter or I will survive until she’s 18, so let’s write about it and see where we end up!


Do you ever get unsolicited advice from well-meaning friends and relatives? Advice like, “oh that’s nothing, it’s only going to get worse.” Or even worse, you are telling your friend about your latest screaming match with your kid and they one-up you with a story far worse about their own kid.

Really? It’s not a contest. I just want to talk about my morning so you’ll understand why I am missing chunks of my hair today.

By the way, I know it will only get worse and the battles more fierce. It doesn’t make me feel any better when you tell me that. There, got that out of the way.

Mornings are not fun for the girlie and me. By the fifth time that I’m asking her to get up and get moving, I’m not actually speaking in a normal tone of voice. This happens EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. We have the same routine on school days; it really doesn’t vary much. So when I ask her to get breakfast and she comes back with, “Can I have a fruit bar (aka popsicle)?” and I say, “No,” why should that be a surprise? None of the normal breakfast food will work today. The bacon is not salty enough. There’s fuzz on the strawberries. There’s no time to make waffles or cereal. Pop-Tarts are gross. So are Nutrigrain bars. (They aren’t normally.) I finally find a peach cup in the pantry that will do.

We get to the bus stop and it become imperative that I drive back home to get a book that she wanted to read. If it was so important now, why wasn’t it 5 minutes ago when we were still in the living room? She spent 10 minutes debating this with me, which led to tears and her not getting her way. She really needs to put her debating skillz to work on a team in high school. So she tears out of the car, slams the door and leaves me just steaming. All will be well when I get home tonight. It almost always is.

Footnote: As soon as I came in the door that night, she ran and gave me a huge, long, tight hug, apologized for the morning and said that what she was asking for wasn’t that important. When she’s upset, her stomach hurts and she said it hurt all day. The good part of all of this is that she WILL apologize occasionally. And so will I when I’m wrong. Her apologies are precious to me.