Shadow Puppet Storyteller

Rules and Regulation

My husband and I had to have a knock-down drag-out nearly with our 5 year old late today. There was the freedom of hours of romping around with a posse of boys in a friend's yard while all the preparations for a teen's birthday celebration slowly advanced. She did not want to leave when her father and I stated that time had arrived. Yet she came to the car, suddenly taken with the idea that not riding in her car seat was a proposition to consider. I knew it was a mile trip through the residential streets we were so familiar with. Earlier in the day, on a trip of four blocks, I allowed her to take her brother's usual seat (wearing the seatbelt) in one last usurping of power she had achieved in the week he was away from home at camp.

Our problem at this moment, she expected her request to be granted, but daddy would have none of it. He insisted she sit in her child safety seat.

"I do not want to chance a ticket," he was reasoning this with her more than with me. She became completely mule-headed and bucked out of any wrangling to "assist" in getting the straps managed.

She is fully aware that at age six (she is 3 mos. away from that age) she is no longer required by law to be strapped into the contraption. We stood around ignoring her demands until a ridiculous amount of time had passed. Standing outside the car, conferring, I finally concluded that I would walk the irreversable child down the street and allow daddy to drive the car away.

She was surprised by this option and began to fret that she did not want to walk all the way home. I explained that her attempt to get her way left us only with that choice. I asked if she would get into the car should daddy bring it back - and she nodded - but I think she was perplexed about the idea of just how that was to happen.

Down the street, and around the corner he parked the car in anticipation of our approach. She still struggled when I placed her in the seat at this point. I can admire her spirit, misguided and stubborn as it is. It makes me horrifyingly angry to be fought by her at every turn, yet that capability is certainly something I want my daughter to retain - not be trained out of her.

We can't do enough to help our children know to fight and rebuke people trying to force them into vehicles, bathroom stalls, wherever abductions or predatory sexual encounters could be attempted. So, I feel so helpless and ineffectual as a parent when I can't get her to follow the necessary rules. Sometimes they're my rules, sometimes the government's. But when she won't listen to me at age five, to one of the only rules that applies to her at such an age, I worry about how I can possibly get her to acquiesse to my desires when she's a teen!

Even after she apologized (which I stated was required for her continued use of being transported in the car) I cried my eyes out in huge levels of denial, disownment and outright frustration over the whole ordeal.

Do I need medication, or what?