Girls will be girls

Dad gives Mom perspective on “girl stuff.”

I’m pretty sure I time-traveled into the future today and saw what life will be like when my 5-year-old daughter hits middle school. In case you couldn’t see this coming, it is NOT PRETTY.

My girl was mean to another girl—one of her best friends from kindergarten, mind you—in front of the girl’s mother and my mother-in-law. I got to hear about it first thing when I got home from work. Being the 21st century attachment parenting (or whatever) parent that I am, rather than whip my kid’s ass (frowned on these days), I said, “How would you feel if [friend’s name] treated you that way?”

She didn’t want to fess up to much, of course. But I wanted to hear my girl’s side of the story, which was that her grandmother had not told her the friend was coming over ahead of time. My child, already moody at 5—which sends shivers up my spine when I project out 10 years—had already made some unspoken mental plan to play by herself for the afternoon. So when her friend showed up, her reaction was, “What are you doing here?” Not quite the joyful reunion of two chatterbox kindergarteners my mother-in-law was expecting. This friend lives up the street from us and normally when she and her family pass by our house on foot on fair weather days, there’s nothing but giggles and gushing and happy sounds emanating from the girls.

Not having been there myself, I felt embarrassed retroactively, but a bit impotent since it had happened hours ago, and frankly, five hours in 5-year-old time is like five years in adult time. I texted my daughter’s friend’s mom to apologize. She replied yp say, “No worries.It happens.” but I still felt bad. I also gave my daughter a choice about how to apologize to her friend, via written note or face to face. She chose the latter, saying that she wants to apologize in person “without all the grown-ups watching.”

When I told my husband about the whole thing, he just gave a look that seemed to say, “Chicks, what mess.” Apropos on a number of levels. My husband is maddeningly right-on about stupid stuff that gets my panties in a twist:

• My mother-in-law’s suggestion that rain boots were not the right footwear for school because there is no traction on the soles, which caused our child to slip while running into the classroom and freak out and make her grandma feel bad for leaving her there, wounded and in pain, only to come home and inadvertently make me feel like a deadbeat parent for buying the rain boots (on clearance at Sears) in the first place.
• The day our kid’s teacher told us she thought our girl needed “reading intervention.”
• Our child not wanting to sleep alone in her room, in her own bed, since she was 2 and a half.

Except for the last item, which puts a serious damper on our conjugal relations, my husband has always just said, “Don’t worry about it. What can you do? It’s no big deal.”

Friggin buddha, I want to strangle him sometimes. Because this is what he said when I told him the story from today. “What can you do? Girls.” Followed by, “All my friends who have older daughters tell me we haven’t seen the worst of it.” Then he took a sip of beer.