Bird Bash

I read some good stuff today, but decided not to post about it. I decided to talk about something that happened yesterday.

Bird is potty-training. She's pretty good at it so far. This time she was playing outside after it rained and she decided she needed to go. So she walks through the kitchen, the dining room, the hall, kicked a baseboard or two, and went into the bathroom making mud prints all over the floor. Guess who has to clean it up? When I saw her I said, "Hey, what are you doing???"

"I'm gonna go pee."

"Look what you did all over the floor!"

She looks. She sees.

I says, "Take your shoes off."

She makes no move for it. She walks around some more tracking more mud where it wasn't messy yet.

"No, sit down and take them off!"

She sits down and starts pitching a fit - and not taking her shoes off. Now I was mad, so I walked off to clean up the mess until she was ready to stop crying, sorta waiting for an adult to come spank her. Nobody came and she quit by the time I was done, took her shoes off and went pee. The whole time I'm giving her a speech about what to do when you come in the house. "Take off your shoes, leave them at the door..." and she's saying, "yes ma'am, yes ma'am, sorry," before I've finished saying anything so I know she's not listening. I go back to whatever I was doing thinking, "When will she pay attention and just listen to what I say without pitching a fit?" A little while later she comes in and says, "Meggy, I didn't mean to put dirt on the floor." That was kinda funny - she's never said anything like that before:P

I said, "I know you didn't mean to Birdie, but you've got to pay attention when you come inside ok?"

"Ok. I'm sorry." She came and sat in my lap and I told her exactly what she was supposed to do next time, then she repeated it perfectly. So everything was happy and I wasn't mad and she wasn't mad and we all lived happily ever after.

It made me start thinking about working things out. She knew I was mad at what she had done and she came to set it right. Pretty smart for a two foot tall potty-trainer. She said she was sorry and she knows what to do to avoid disaster next time because of it. And I know that she was really listening. I bet bigger kids and grown-ups could still do that successfully and make things work out a lot better.