Battles on the Home front

Erin Brighid, my first born, will be six next week...God willing. I am hoping that both of us make it to her next birthday. This child brought me such angst and indigestion this morning, I seriously contemplated walking into my bedroom, locking my door and sticking my head beneath my pillow for at least three hours.

She, and her sisters, have been with me continuously for nearly eighteen months. School was a complete joke last year. She had a dance class, and that was about it. We pulled Erin and Meghan out of school because when Elizabeth was so sick in the NICU, I refused to take a chance that colds and flus would enter our home via the germ factory that preschools typically are. Any germs would have inevitably been passed along to me, rendering me useless and banned from being with Lizzie. But even before we withdrew them from school, Erin has kicked and screamed her way into every classroom which she has ever encountered. I don't know if it is a lack of emotional development or maturity (that's what I like to tell myself), or if she just figured out how to play me early on and will continue to try to do it until the end of time.

So, I decided to send Erin and Meghan to a Vacation Bible School this week. Each morning they go for three hours. They will be excited and have fun, I told myself. And then the tears began. The very patient teachers allowed the girls to stay together in the "Just Finished Kindergarten" class, partially because of the obvious separation anxiety, and primarily because the younger class that Meghan would have gone into was packed with about 60 children. They smiled at this solution (probably again thinking they had gotten one over on old mom) and off they went, holding hands and looking angelic.

All was well. Until I awoke the monster this morning.

An hour of sobbing, tears streaming down her face, telling me that she hates Bible school (ouch, sorry God), and that she never wants to go again. I saw an opportunity, a make-or-break situation, the stuff of which men are made. I went for it, needing only the occasional support from friends on IM. So pathetic. I informed the monster that she could go happy or she could go sad, but she was going, and there wasn't a thing she could do to make me change the plans I had made for us today. I ignored her, got her sisters ready...and we were all out the door by twenty to nine.

Today I won.

This is just one of many battles waged on the home front with this child. She is willful, strong, brilliant, stubborn and determined to get her way. And I have to recognize my short comings where she is concerned. I have sheltered her and allowed this behavior to continue for nearly six years, out of fear, naivete, and sheer exhaustion. I have been beaten down, and I haven't wanted to stand up and fight back the right way. I've allowed the control to slip through my fingers like sand and watched, with a feeling of helplessness, as it has fallen into hers.

I love her in a way that she'll not know until the time, should the time come, that she has a baby girl of her own. But I am worn to the nub by her as much as I love her. Before she arrived, I was not yet a mother. She created this role for me and we have been figuring it out together every day, every step of the way. I guess something clicked in me this morning that said that if I'm willing to be tough on Lizzie to teach her to sleep, then I must also be tough on Erin to teach her to obey. I didn't get a manual on how to mother, and she didn't receive a rule book for all of the ins and outs of good behavior when we entered into this relationship with one another.

We'll keep learning together, and she'll continue to make me who I am as a mother, as we wage these battles and fight these wars, hoping all the time that at the end of the day, there will be peace in our house and love in our hearts. I can only continue to hope that my mothering improves and I take back and maintain the control around here. Sooner or later we'll figure this out.