You're an idiot!

 

I love Tomika. Desperately. So is it wrong if I occasionally want to strangle her?

Tonight I was cooking dinner and about 10 minutes away from it being ready I asked Tomika to nick down the shop to get some bread to eat with the meal. The shop is about 2 minutes from our place, a block away. It would have taken her a total of 5 minutes to go, get the bread, and come home, even if she was walking in typical child slow motion.

She decided that she needed to go to the toilet first.

What's with that anyway? Is it a normal childhood response for them to go to the toilet whenever you ask them to do something?

Me: Please do the dishes.

Tomika: Ok, I'm gonna go to the toilet first.

Me: Time for a shower.

Tomika: 2 seconds, I just need to pee.

Me: Can you take out the rubbish?

Tomika: As soon as I've gone to the loo.

Grrr..!

Anyway, 15 minutes later, dinner is dished up on the table, no bread, no Tomika. I call her to see why she's taking so long at the shop and her phone rings on the coffee table. I go out into the front yard to see if I can see her. I can't see anyone anywhere near the shop. I'm now starting to panic. I go back inside to get some shoes on to go to the shop myself... And there she is, on the couch, watching TV. She looks at me with her phone in her hand and asks why I called her...

I lost it.

Now before Tomika was born I swore to myself that I would NEVER be like those other Mums who yelled and screamed and called their kid names. I had much more class than that. I was smarter, kinder, had more patience.

That vow lasted about 3 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, I TRY to refrain from calling my child names. But honestly, sometimes she IS an idiot. And who am I to buck the system?

Once I had gotten the whole panicky Mum, 'I'm yelling at you because I love you and you scared me' tirade, out of my system, I ended up going to the shop myself, just to have some time to cool down.

It just goes to show that the old adage applies doubly to teenagers. If you want something done properly, without bloodshed, do it yourself.