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Thank you, Mommy, for not upsetting me...

She screamed "You're making me very upset!" so loud that it could be heard a mile away.  The person standing across from her wasn't listening to any form of logic.  She just didn't understand.  The frustration and anger was building and building so high that she swore she was going to pop.  Really, how could she not understand the importance of these decisions?  What could she possibly be thinking?  Her priorities were completely wrong and she was going to cause such a huge catastrophe that the Titanic would look tiny.  She kept trying over and over and over again to explain the situation, but it just could not be diffused.  There would be no happy ending to this story.

"Fine, Sweet Pea, you can wear your PJs to the store."

At last this woman understood the complexity of the situation.  Seriously, why would she think that PJs couldn't be worn to the store?  That's ridiculous!  "Thank you, Mommy, for not upsetting me" she kindly told the woman across from her.

Logic - and fashion - to a toddler are not the same as Mama's.  In fact, they're not even close.  Neither are emotional connections to ideas and concepts.  What's emotional to a toddler seems simple to a parent.  Same with what's emotional to a parent.  My daughter was so upset about not being able to wear PJs to the store.  It seems ridiculous, but it's something that she could control, so she asserted herself where she knew I would best give in.  The funny thing is, her attachment to wearing PJs out in public quickly disappeared as I allowed her to do this more and more often.  It was no longer a battle so she had to find something else to control.  I, on the other hand, had more of an emotional attachment to the words my daughter was saying to me - even though I knew she was simply mimicking words that she'd heard me say.  She didn't have the emotional attachment to the phrases. 

Mama's Law learned: What a child is emotionally attached to one day will change; however, you may want to watch the phrases you say around them because they will repeat them in their own version of similar situations.

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