The Blame Game

I have this kid.

She’s a girl, and she just started school. I thought I knew her, but since she’s started school she’s… changing. She used to talk so sweetly, so kindly, and now? She’s really emotional and demanding. She’s been extremely entitled, and there’s been more than a few occasions that she’s spouted off and left me rooted where I stood with my jaw dropped.
Did she just SAY that?

And she’s added a fun, new factor to our life: blame.
When she wasn’t eating her dinner and I suggested we race to finish and SHE stuffed her mouth SO full and then ran to the bathroom, spit it all out and FLUSHED it and THEN LIED TO HER DAD about what she’d done with her food behind a locked bathroom door…
It was my fault.
Dad sent her to bed early without any dessert, and the next morning I gave her the biggest hug and asked her if she slept well.
“I was so sad when you told a lie and couldn’t get dessert,” I said.
“Yeah…” she looked up at me with her gorgeous hazel eyes, “You shouldn’t have told me it was a race to finish our food.”
I made she sure she KNEW under no uncertain terms that it was NOT MY FAULT SHE LIED.
But she sort of blinked back like, “Say whatever you want. I’m the victim here.”

I don’t really know what to do. I’ve never had a 5 year old emotional girl who bursts into tears at the drop of a hat and demands just about everything from me.
Get me a spoon.
Give me bread.
I need glue.

To which I raise my eyebrows and say, “EXCUSE ME!”
And she ducks her head and says, “please…”

A few nights ago, she had nothing nice to say to me. After telling me a few times that day how much she hated being home (Columbus Day), she demanded dinner, then told me she hated it.
“GIRL,” I said firmly to her, “You better knock that attitude off and say something NICE to me for a change.”
She audibly groaned and then said in the most depressed tone a five year old could ever muster, “You’re pretty.”
Later that night, she accused me of being a mean mom -and she meant it (I take all of this with a grain of salt because I know she’s just 5 and of course being home is seriously LAME compared to school and of course I’m mean if I don’t let her watch 3 hours of TV at night).
That’s when my husband had had enough.
He set her straight, and I was glad. I could have set her straight, but it just means so much more coming from Dad. After he’d talked with her, she turned to me with her eyes wide open.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. And then she said something about how she was glad I wasn’t in jail, or something…

Yesterday I got blamed because she didn’t wasn’t able to give her hand-drawn flamingo to her teacher. I put her drawing in her backpack and it wasn’t there when she got to school.
“MOM! You shouldn’t have taken it out!”
“I didn’t,” I said, “I put it in your bag.”
“You took it out. I just know you did,” she reasoned, “It’s not here and my teacher may never have it now.”
And she was on the verge of bursting into tears.
“Listen to me,” I said, very carefully, “If you have something you want to give to your teacher, it is NOT my job to make sure that happens. If YOU want to give it to her, YOU need to do that. You can’t blame me for it. Big girls take care of their own things. The bigger you get, the more you take care of. Do NOT blame me.”
“Well,” she sniffled, “It’s not in my bagpack. Someone just taked it.”
And by “someone” she meant “Mom.” I could tell by the way she looked at me with sheer betrayal in her eyes.

This is a stage, right? This isn’t a personality thing, right? Because I have visions of a teenager making horrible choices and blaming them all on me.
If Mom had kept me home, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant…

AHHHHHHHHH!

She really is the sweetest and best kid -the most helpful and wonderful and fun. I’m such a lucky Mom. I just wish there was a handbook for each separate kid.
And Mom.
And pregnancy.
And husband.
So I guess there’s only one thing left to do: PRAY.