My four year old can say the sweetest things. I’m rarely short on sharing his tender thoughts. I want to write down the very sweetest of the sweet so as to never ever forget them. Mostly, for the times that I envision for the future…him,16, slamming the door and telling me he hates me. I want to have them in the forefront of my mind so that in those moments, I can go back and see that in the very depths of his heart, he loves me. Or at least prove to him that he did.
Thirty-Three. The amount of times a day I would guess he tells me he loves me.
Sixteen. The number of times a day I would guess he tells me I’m the best mom ever.
Thirteen. The approximate number of times he states that I am the coolest, each day.
Six. The generalized guesstimation on the number of times a day he thanks me for being his mom.
And then there are the other lovely things he says to me amidst smiles and giggles. The things like, “You and daddy will live with me when we all grow up” and “Mommy, you’re the best girl ever”. Those are countless and immeasurable and all sort of blur together.
But you know what doesn’t blur together?
The first time your kid…that person that you may have carried in your belly, birthed from your business, fed from the very bosom on your being, and fed, clothed, loved, obsessed over and lost copious months of sleep for…the very first time that that kid utters the phrase, “I don’t like you”.
And that first time…it was today. Mark that in the book of Barrett. That today, on the twenty-third day of July in the year of Two Thousand and Thirteen, after an absolutely delightful morning and en route to nap, my son, the very son that I had carried inside me, birthed from my biz and so on and so forth, declared to myself, Jonah, and the walls of the Brehm house that because we were going to put him to nap before Jonah, he did. not. like. me.
Gah. Ugh. Sheesh. I mean, what’s a mom to say? I was so caught off guard. Like when they discontinued my Korres moisturizer at Sephora or when they told me B’s fingers were webbed and I pictured a duck {pretty much the same, right? Moisturizer and webbed fingers.}.
So caught off guard that at first, I didn’t say anything. I stopped on the stairs and thought, perhaps I have some water stuck in my ears…did he just say he doesn’t like me. And you know what else I thought of in that very moment? Not the I love yous, or the best mom evers, or the you’re the coolests, or the other sweet somethings. None of those are top of mind when your child states he does not like you. Instead, my heart sank, my eyes welled up a bit and my skin felt hot.
This was not supposed to happen at 4. I was not prepared for that. Nine…maybe. Thirteen…for sure. Seventeen…without a doubt. But at 4? No way, Jose.
So I did what any rational mother would do {ahem} and took away his nap time story and instead, told him about how God asks that we honor thy mother and thy father. I then told him some wisdom imparted on me by my mother-in-law that she shared with her children and that is, that he will certainly have times where he will feel that way and he will think that way but he does not need to say those words out loud in haste. These things that may perhaps have passed right over my son’s head still parted my lips along with many other kernels. So while I could have stopped with the Ten Commandments or my mother-in-law’s advice, I was all Energizer Bunny about it and kept on going. I’m pretty sure, that because he is 4, all of the morsels of mama madness really made an impact. But I’m an over-talker, an over-communicater and an over-sharer. So I did what I do. I over-talked, I over-communicated and I over-shared. I may have even, just a bit, over-guilted. What a rookie I must be, right?
And now, at the other end of the day, I feel that I should have just laughed and said, “Oh B. That’s not nice” and been on with our nap. But I didn’t. So for today, I will add to my list:
One. The number of times my child has told me he doesn’t like me and I hopped on board the crazy train.
And I will know that the next time, I will be more prepared to respond.
Because, for the most part, my four year old says the sweetest things. For the most part. And for the most part, that’s pretty good, right?
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