My Daughter

They say that parenting isn't for cowards and it is so true. This weekend I have had to do some hard parenting. I love my daughter and she is basically a wonderful kid. Being a single parent has its own special set of problems. The problem my daughter is facing right now is to respect me when I have no back up. She also has ADHD. Being a parent of a child with ADHD takes special patience I have discovered. (I am not usually a patient person.)

So this weekend, I decided that I was going to get serious with her about respecting me while at the same time carefully explaining to her what I expected and watching her follow through. I ended up spanking her 3 times. (I absolutely hate to spank my child.) She is so strong willed about not doing the thing I am asking her to do that she ends up getting in the worst trouble she can.
Part of it is my fault. I am not very consistent. It would be great if my house was clean and I said every night, pick up your toys, and she did and we went to bed. But that just isn't my life. She has a toy room with many empty shelves and toys all over the floor and neither one of us has the energy to put them up. Maybe some day we will get there.

But, while part of her is infuriating me with her lack of respect and obedience, the other part of me delights in her childhood. She has many ideas about how things work. The other day she was talking about our new neighbor's dog (male) and how he would be the perfect husband for our dog Xena (female) and that they could have puppies. I explained to her that Xena had an operation which made it impossible for her to have puppies. She thought that was horrible! I asked her if she knew how dogs had puppies. She was happy to explain. The boy dog see something in his food bowl and thinks it is food. It is really an egg (her new "big" word - but she really doesn't know what it means). He gets the egg in his mouth and kisses the girl dog and she gets the egg in her mouth and swallows it. Then she grows puppies. What could be simpler?

Gilligan or Gideon
Today I asked her what she learned at Sunday School. She said, "Do you remember Gilligan? ( I actually saw Gilligan at aa dinner theatre production in Amarillo and got my pic made with him.  Big Gilligan fan!!) Well, today we studied about him. He had 300 men and was going to fight in the war, but the other guy had ten thirteen hundred thousand, so he lost. The other guy just had too many people. People who were drinking with their head in the water had to go home." (She is reading this while I am typing it in and likes it now. Can't wait til she is about 18 to show it to her!!!!) Thank God for the persistence of Sunday School teachers.  
I am embarrassed to say that she made a movie while I wasn't watching. At first I was going to trash it, but after watching it, I knew I had to save it forever. This was made a few weeks before her birthday, Christmas, and her trip to Disney World (but she probably still feels the same way). Check out those lips!!  

She's my daughter; gotta love her!