Monday, August 14, 2006

Merry

Merry and Ayden are having a Great visit. They are spending lots of time with their Grandparents and alone together. I miss Merry. David, Thomas and I spent bunches of time together this weekend without Merry and I missed her.

I missed her until she was around, then I was annoyed with the way
she treated her brother and any and all adults. My four year old is acting the way I envision a fourteen year old, defiant and condescending. When asked to do something, she puts her hand on her hip, cocks her head and looks at you like you are silly. "How could you make such a silly request"?

Merry likes hanging around with her Grampy because he lets her do "Bad Things". When the girls are with Grampy, he, as all good, self respecting Grandparents do, follows the path of least resistance. This gives the girls the opportunity to make all kinds of decision that four year olds should not be making. It is difficult for Merry to readjust to having bossy parents who do not except "no" for an answer.

Poor David does not know how to handle the four year old tag team he has been pitted against. The girls are not very nice to him and this causes him to act poorly. I see a clique, and David is not involved. They tease him and tell him he is bad, so David chases them and attempts to hit them with sticks, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Davids ostracism from the girls group of two, has led to the formation of another group. Daddy, David and Thomas, were a band of brothers this weekend and we had a good time. I did miss Merry though.


4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know, Peter. I find myself feeling more closely aligned with my son, even though nobody has even been ostracised. I'm constntly kicking myself for it; it just feels unfair to my daughter. Sometimes I think it's just because I know him better. After all, he's been around for a while now. But, Emily insists that it's gender bias which has been deeply engrained into me by the patriarchal society in which we live, and to which I'm blind (blind, baby, blind) due to the fact that it (the bias) is, at this point, a function of my actual identity. I think that's bullshit, but I will admit that it's complicated.

11:24 AM EDT  
Blogger Peter said...

Due to the crappiness of blogger and my inabillity to reply via email, I am forced to do it here and will never know if you see it. Yes I will (Statcounter). I may be off the mark but TNB is only three of four months old, she has been so dependant on Mom, that she is probably just beginning to realize you are around and involved in her life.

It took eight months before any of my kids felt anything but annoyance towards me. At about that age we start having fun. When they can sit up, fend for themselves a bit and eat something that doesn't come from Mom or a bottle. Its the (boob, baby, the boob) that they, little ones are concerned with, she shuns you, not the other way around.

The once powerful patriarchal society is crumbling all around us. The responsibillity we have taken on in the raising of our children dwarfs that of generations of men before us. We are living in a matriarchal society at my house, Mom rules, what she says goes, I help out, to the best of my abillity, which is more often than not, lacking. Soon that little girl will crawl out from under Mom's apron and get to know her Dad. You wait and see.

12:23 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"self-fulfilling prophecy"
Hate those!
It seems like 4-year old girls are so much more sophisticated than the fellows.

1:05 PM EDT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Poor David!

As you know, I have 2 girls. My sister has one of each. My poor nephew gets left out all the time. We have to keep reminding the girls to include him but it doesn't always work.

2:55 PM EDT  

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