“Dad, you forgot my water bottle”
Today started like any day, with wake-up. School starts at 8:10 so we start wake-up around 6:50-7:00. Honestly, it should be a bit earlier but I enjoy the peace and quiet while drinking my coffee and getting lunches and backpacks ready.
Wake-up is rarely quick. Often it’s about 10 minutes of quiet and calm “wake-up”. Today, I told myself, it would be a better day and I would start the day better. It was….mostly.
After only about 5 minutes of my typical “Wake-up”, I was very calm and asked my daughter to put her pj’s away and get dressed. What should have been a 2 second exercise, took 10.
“Dad, I’m so thirsty. I need water.” “Dad, I have to feed giraffe” (her stuffed animal of the week”. “Dad, aren’t I doing so good?” “I need to go say good morning to the dog”. Usually, this is the point I would start to lose it in the morning. They I took a step back and realized that this is how her mind works. It’s like a ping pong ball, bouncing from one thought to the next, looking for validation and the dopamine that her brain needs to survive.
From there is was the typical fight to brush teeth, get dressed and get downstairs for breakfast. There is usually an argument over breakfast. For the last 2 weeks, she only wanted the same thing: eggs and bacon. Today as I started to make that, she changed her mind and only wanted cereal. Honestly, that was easier as I didn’t want to clean up another mess.
Then comes the endless “Get your shoes on, we have to go”. I feel like I need to record my voice and just play clips of me saying the same thing over and over again. School is a quick3 minute drive away. I drop her, get in the car to drive home and my phone dings: ”Dad, you forgot my water bottle….”
Texts From My Daughter 