Kirsty's blog: Best friend or mummy?

It seems Carmel and I have hit another rough patch.  Stress is obviously one possible culprit for our sudden fall out, or it could be that, being off work for two weeks for the first time in over a year, we´ve actually realised that we don´t know each other so well. 

We haven´t spent this amount of time together since she was eight months old and we have to establish our limits.  Boy do we have our limits!  If I ask Carmel do do anything, she refuses. If I tell her not to do something, she does it repeatedly just to see what I´ll do in response.  Sadly, I´m none too pleased with my own responses.  I threaten her with "If you do that again, I´ll take that away, or I won´t do that or we won´t go there¨Or I shout and basically let her see that I´m losing my grip or temper or whatever sanity I may have had before parenthood took it away.

Carmel currently has a better relationship with a hand puppet crocodile she named tick-tock than she has with me.  The problem is that I am tick-tocks voice. I tend to make him a bit silly, he certainly knows less than her and she is able to teach him and show him the way.  As a result she confides in him, laughs with him and actually listens to his advice.  This would be marvellous, a great way of achieving communication regarding safety, nutrition and love but I´ve gone and blown that now.  In one battle of the wills between me (the real me, not the crocodile me) and my daughter, I got tick-tock to side me and spoke directly to him, so today she is eyeing him with suspicion too.

I realise that as Carmels mother I am unlikely to be her best friend but right now I would settle for some respectful submission from time to time.  Friends have commented that I am lucky to have such a confident child who knows her own mind rather than a quietly compliant child with no will of her own - I beg to differ!  Frankly after a week of constant confrontations and battles I would rather have a cat.  If I can´t make it up to her this week I am going to have to get tick-tock to regain her trust.  At least she and my hand will have a great time together.