Don’t you hate it when you look back on an interaction with your kid and find yourself wishing you’d handled it differently?  Lately I’m finding myself in this situation a lot with four-and-a-half year old “Emmie.”

For example: a few days ago, Emmie had a complete meltdown because when she asked for another kid in the family, I said no. 

“But it’s not fair!”  Emmie crossed her arms, wrinkled her face and yelled out her protest.  Then the tears began to flow.  “I want someone else to be the smallest,” she continued.  She stomped her feet and kept her eyes on mine to see if she would get a reaction.

Now on any given day, Emmie by her count suffers through at least six or seven monstrous injustices.  Each of these is met with the level of drama she believes to be appropriate, meaning as much as she can muster.  So when I didn’t rise to her bait on the topic of bringing another child into the family, she took it to the next level: her mouth opened, her eyes screwed up tight and she dragged herself from the room as she let loose full-throated wails of misery.

No, I didn’t give a millimeter on that third-child thing.

Later, however, after Emmie had gone to bed, I recalled her complaint and I empathized.  Not about the request itself, which is obviously not her decision, but about the feelings that led to it.  I can imagine that it must be tough to always be the smallest in the family, the least competent in many areas, the only one who can’t read, the one who gets scared more easily than anyone else, and so on.  When I had the chance to think about it, I could see that being in that position day after day would be difficult and Emmie might actually deserve some sympathy and TLC to make her feel better.

But Emmie got neither sympathy nor TLC from me.  Instead, she received a show of complete indifference, because her method of delivering her message was so obnoxious, so rude, and so oft-repeated that I couldn’t get past it to see the legitimate, hurt feelings behind her attitude.

What’s wrong with this picture?  Aren’t I supposed to be the grown-up here?

As I’ve mentioned before, Emmie, is a bona-fide drama queen who can over-emote in any situation, turn any minor mishap into a volcanic, lava-strewn path of destruction.  She’s got the whole adolescent thing down-pat already, and she isn’t even five yet.  (When I say that I’m terrified of her tween and teen years, I’m probably understating my feelings.)  In short, she launches into her the-world-is-ending routine and I tune her out, over and over again.

This post doesn’t wrap up where I wish it did.  I’d like merely to say that Emmie is young and she’ll grow out of this behavior as she matures.  I do hope and believe that this might be true (although I suspect several doors will be slammed right off their hinges before she gets there).  But the one who needs to improve her act more immediately is me.  Yes, it’s appropriate for me not to succumb to her demonstrations, nor to give in to unreasonable demands just because Emmie knows better than anyone how to turn on the waterworks.  But it is my responsibility as her mother to identify the real issues beneath the preschool drama and try to teach her other ways of dealing with her feelings.

It’s one of those things: my daughter’s having the temper-tantrums, but I need to do a better job, too.  I’m the grown-up; damn, now I need to act like one.