The Switch

Does your child have a switch? You'll be having a great, wonderful day with your child and then suddenly, it's as though someone, somewhere, flipped a switch and turned your child into anything but pleasant. Elsie must have one. Somewhere.

Yesterday morning, Elsie was playing with her Cinderella doll (polly pocket type doll) and she found one of the dresses had gotten stuck in its drawer and torn. She brought it to me, holding it out in one hand before her. "Look," she said. "It's broke." I told her that I was sorry and said that she could throw that one away and play with another one of the dresses. "But this one's pink. And, it was my FAVORITE," she responded, her face plastered with a puppy dog look the whole time. I tried to distract her with other dresses, but blue, white, yellow, and red just wouldn't do. Luckily, it wasn't long before we were on our way out the door and the pink dress was forgotten (temporarily).

Later that evening, Jason was home, and I was telling him how well behaved Elsie and Claira were during our outing. In the middle of our conversation, Elsie decided to share her sorrow with her daddy, telling him about the "broke pink dress in the trash." After we explained what happened to him, I praised Elsie for being so well behaved lately and told her we'd get her a new pink dress for her Cinderella doll. All was well (temporarily).

Fast forward to today. Elsie was really good all morning long, through lunch, and while Claira napped. After Claira woke up, we headed to Target in search of a pink dress for Cinderella. We quickly found one, wandered through the toy aisles, grabbed some baby food, and I announced it was time to checkout. As we made our way to the front of the store, Elsie commented, "I thought we were going to get me a pink dress?" I told her she was carrying the pink dress and she clarified that she wanted one for herself. I told her we weren't buying clothes today, and her smile turned upside down, but she still walked without protest. When we entered the store, I told Elsie not to touch everything along the aisles, which is one of her favorite pastimes. Still, it was no surprise when she kneeled down to look at all of the add-on impulse buys up near the registers. While she checked out toothbrushes and hand sanitizer, I put the contents of our cart onto the belt. Then, Elsie turned around to declare that she wanted to put the princess up there. When she spotted it already done, she immediately started crying. The crying followed us out to the parking lot and was steady the whole way home. I spent the late afternoon wondering where the Elsie from yesterday was--the one who was happy to leave JumpZone and her friend with no complaints. Somewhere in Target, she pulled the switch.