But apparently my 9yo cannot. I’m telling you, it is a battle of wills lately, and I think he is winning that battle. What he lacks in reason and legitimacy, he has the stamina to stick with it no matter what. He is going to win by default simply because he has worn me down until I am nothing more than a burbling puddle of human goo. Either that or my head is going to somehow become a fully rotating appendage and begin spinning out of control as I spew pea green vomit.
He is so defiant, yet manages to not be overtly so. If it’s possible, he is very polite in his defiance. Which, I realize, on the surface sounds either impossible or not a big deal. It isn’t so much the severity of the individual acts of defiance, but the frequency of them that gets to me. It doesn’t matter what it is about, chances are he is either going to totally ignore what I am saying or he is going to agree, and then do what he wants anyway. And most of the stuff is relatively little, but we go through this over and over and over and over and,… well, you get the point. But while most of it is small stuff, I feel like you still have to sweat it because if you let that go, it sets a precedent that Mom’s directives are more of a suggestion and it makes it that much easier to ignore EVERYTHING I say. And that just isn’t good.
I have yelled, I have talked, and I have internally lost my mind. To no avail whatsoever. It’s gotten to the point where it feels like a slap in the face. I have talked to him so many times, explained it so many times. We have talked about why it’s wrong. We have talked about the fact that, like it or not, I am the mom, and sometimes there are reasons that he might not necessarily know about for the things I say and do. We have talked about the fact that while maybe there are times when he doesn’t understand, there are reasons, that age has given me wisdom he doesn’t have yet. I have told him that it hurts my feelings when he doesn’t listen to me, that it is to the point where he is, by his actions, telling me that I am not important enough to listen to.
I am one frustrated mama.
That’s how they are until they are 25.