I had just listened to Sandra Dodd's great talk on partnerships and reread Léandre Bergeron's quotes on being on our children's side in the book I am writing with my friend Nini this week when I went to the beach with the girls yesterday. I swam with my girls up to the rock wall in the cold water when many of the other mothers screamed to their kids from the shore to not go too far... (disclaimer: I am not a great swimmer and swimming with a little girl tied up to my neck is not one of my favorite things...). We even did a mud fight (under the disapproving look of a couple of mothers who probably thought I was giving their kids a bad idea... second disclaimer: it might have been the case). I felt like a great mom and might even have felt at this point like I deserved some kind of gold medal for best mom of the year or something and this is maybe why it almost struck me like lightning when Mathilde threw a fit when she decided that nothing in the bag of snacks that I brought pleased her (I made sure I had 3 of everybody's favorite: popcorn, apples and cereals). I had made a curried pear-chicken salad for my little carnivore with nice organic chicken for lunch an hour before and everybody was nicely fed. I was dumbfounded. Mathilde was mad and the whole atmosphere of fun and connexion was gone...
It was disappointing and frustrating for all of us, but there was not much I could do anymore. What I could have done, however, was to side with the adults, give them a complicit look and sarcastically say how fun it was to travel with kids... but I didn't, because it doesn't serve my partnership with my girls. We simply went back to the campsite and made a big sprout salad (her request!) and walked 30 feet to the inlet to enjoy the amazing sunset. All was good again.
This event made me realize a couple more things about Mathilde. How she really needs a lot of diversity, for instance. She has always been a little butterfly. She needs a lot of different activities to be happy: she'll do a few rows of knitting, a painting, start a drawing, a bit of crochet, play the flute for 4 minutes, maybe get the Legos out for 10 minutes, start a sewing project... It is dizzying for someone like me who likes to get things done and over with... and back to their original place... especially in a trailer. I am sure some of you are thinking that we should *teach* her to finish what she starts, but I don't think this way... It is actually a great quality to be a project starter... She might end up being a CEO and get her employees to finish the task... I can easily imagine the employees squirm in their office chairs and straighten their desk when they'll hear her high heels pound the corridor that leads to her office. She'll close her door, drop her designer bag on the floor, cross her long legs clothed in leopard leggings on her executive desk and call her assistant. She'll ask to order a whole roasted chicken with extra crispy skin on the side. For breakfast. I am telling you. Home girl is going to go far in life!
AHAHAHAHA I love this, your girl remind me of somebody...
ReplyDeleteI remember my mum drained from energy after having made up the 15th different activity in one hour, looking at me and saying: " you need to learn to be bored".
then I was ready for more boxes that I turned into theatre...
i loved this post Catherine!
ReplyDeleteand i can't wait to read your book.
Ahhh! See! Now you know that you are losing your time studying! You need to be a CEO! Hey, by the way Vale, we just had an amazing day and dolphin encounter! We were boogie boarding and 3 dolphins (a family? one looked like a baby and was swimming by a bigger one) were swimming really closed to shore for about an hour. Seagulls were fishing all around them the whole time. It was totally awesome.
ReplyDeleteThanks Isa!!
je comprends bien ca les papillons!! ;-)
ReplyDeleteC'est dur d'arriver à être toujorus comme on le voudrait et je te comprends de parfois vouloir peter ta coche... pour l,avoir fait ce matin encore avec mon fils. ils ont l'art de peser sur les boutons qui font tilter. mais c'est tout un processus merveilleux que d'apprendre à apprivoiser nos boutons et de les désamorcer afin qu'ils ne créent plus en nous les tempêtes qui nous font regretter après notre réaction.
ReplyDeletej'aime les photos à la fin! je sais pas pourquoi, mais qd je vois la photo que tu as prise de JF sur ce post, je sens vraiment que tu l'aimes! ça se sent ds cette photo.
gros becs ma chère,et bon courage avec Mathilde la girouette :O)
jo
ps: ca fait bien longtps que tu mérites une médaille d'ailleurs :O) tu es pas parfaite, personne ne l'es mais franchement, t'es vraiment hot!
I must have missed the news about your book, congrats!
ReplyDeleteI think that many people are wired to go about projects in an unstructured way, though modern life, with its blocks of time (9-17 office hrs etc) goes against it. But I can relate to your daughter, and probably this is why I don't mind getting (some) things done a bit here and a bit there.
About your comments with regards to the other mothers, I'm surprised: they sound very Italian, and not at all like the North American mothers I've met!