Miss Independence

The ear-piecing scream echoes in my head as I sit at the table watching her eat. She has a sweet angel-face on right now, but I know, like a light switch, she can easily flip on the face of discontent in 0.2 seconds. I persist through breakfast with a quick “a-a, eat please” every time I see the look on her face or hear the beginning of a whine.

We are in full -blown potty training mode with Katie now. Our sweet, nearly 4-year-old daughter is starting to go pee-pee and sometimes poop on the potty but still doesn’t quite have the connection to be able to tell us she has to go. It is this lack of connection and, to some extent, her inability to communicate that is causing her to rebel. Katie has an independent spirit which will serve her well in the future. But her need to assert that independence is driving us crazy right now. She doesn’t want to sit in her chair to eat (she’s perfectly fine if she sits on your lap or walks around with her food). She doesn’t want to sit in the car seat and will scream the entire time until she is extracted ( at which point she will greet you with a sweet “hi” and bat her eyes at you as if nothing traumatic has just happened).

I don’t know exactly why this is happening again (we just got done with the 2 years screaming in the car seat jaunt about this time last year). My theory is potty training because it is forcing her to grow up. Of course, it could have something to do with increasing her glyburide dose too. It’s hard to isolate the cause when we don’t experiment in the sterile controllable confines of a lab. My scientific brain is formulating hypotheses while my logical brain realizes there will most likely never be a real answer.

So for now, we wait. We persist through the screaming. We don’t give in to the inappropriate demands of our “Miss Independence”. This too shall pass!?