Tuesday, October 28, 2008
I cannot believe I'm having this conversation...
...with my four year-old. Yeah, we had one of those this morning. As usual, it began quite innocently.

It was below freezing this morning so for the first time this year I pulled out our winter coats. Emma has a cute new one I got for her at JCPenney. She'd seen it before, tried it on, seemed to like it just fine.

We hadn't been on the road 30 seconds before she started complaining about her coat. I think the crux of the problem was the hood and the collar were poking her in the face. She wanted to take it off. I told her she needed the coat because it was cold and I wasn't going to stop the car to take it off. She commenced the whining and pleading. Then it began to get surreal (to me). "I don't want anybody to see me in this coat." What? It's a great coat! Why don't you want anyone to see you? "Please, don't let anyone see me in this coat." Emma, we'll walk inside the double doors and I'll take off the coat before you get to your classroom. "I don't want anyone to see me!" Emma, I don't understand. It's a great coat. What's your problem with it? "It's just not cool."

Whaaaa? OK, here's where I should have probed her for her definition of cool. I think she meant it more in the sense of "this is not cool" meaning "this is not good," rather than it wasn't "hip" enough for her peers. But still, where in the hell did this come from? She had never objected to anything we've put on her in terms of style. Is this where we are heading already?

Really???

At any rate she was so upset by the time we got to school that she was crying and needing tissues to mop up. We'd get her cleaned up and then she'd start again. It took me forever to coax her into her classroom. I paused along the way to show her a coat almost exactly like hers hanging on the pegs outside the classroom. I have no idea if it helped. All I do know is that I was three minutes late to work because of my daughters hysterical reaction to a perfectly nice new coat. Hrumph.
Written at 6:17 PM by Highlandgal.
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