"Mummy, did you cook this food?"
"No, Daddy did."
"Daddy, I don't like you anymore."
Just like that, the reign of Daddy as favourite parent is finished.
F has learned a number of new skills over the last few months. Chief amongst them is the way you can play two parents against each other. She didn't want to put her winter boots on this morning, she wanted her trainers.
"You can't splash in puddles with those, they aren't waterproof," Mummy told her.
"Daddy says they are," she said. True enough, I did say that. They are mostly waterproof, too, just not as much as her boots are. Mummy and I had a nice discussion about this, with F standing behind us both rubbing her hands together and saying "good, good!" like a tiny blond Emperor Palpatine as she tried to put the trainers on again.
And she lies! She lies like mad. Who taught her that? Is that on the curriculum at förskolan? She's supposed to sleep with all the other kids after lunch, and she's been fairly resistant to playing along. That's meant having snoozes when she gets home, or she gets catastrophic around 1600.
Half a minute after her teacher told me she hadn't slept again today, I was officiously informed "Daddy, I have already snoozed just now so I don't need to snooze at home, so don't worry about it." She adds 'don't worry about it' quite a lot to statements at the moment. It makes her sound even more like a Mafia boss than usual.
"I am closing my eyes," she'll tell me when she's supposed to be sleeping, even when I'm looking directly at her and can see that she isn't. I suppose I should be glad even if she fibs like a politician, she can't yet do it efficiently.
Parents who balk her demands are told not to look at her, or sit next to her, or talk to her. Or she goes to another room to (e.g.) pick her nose, so that we can't see when she carries on heedless. She's outright triumphant when she gets her way and cripplingly miserable when she doesn't.
Not that we're any better, really. We flip between bribes and threats, cajoling and bullying just as much as she does, so it's not that hard to see where she gets it from. Best of all is seeing that C has already grasped the basics of these modes of behaviour. As I type, she is on the floor by my feet in her bouncy chair, cooing and grinning when I look at her and growling and shouting if I break eye contact for any reason at all.
That's the parental mode, right there. Obey or face my wrath, but treats if you obey quick enough. Good to know the lessons are being picked up.
