Sunday, June 15, 2008

Omniscience

I am no longer omniscient.

It's a bit of a let-down actually. It used to be that whether I could see her or not, Lee thought I knew exactly what she was doing. I have a theory that the baby monitor contributed to this. Lee used to come home from pre-school and when she'd tell me about what she'd done that morning, she'd ask me "Did you hear me, Mommy?" It took me a while to figure out that she thought I always had the baby monitor on listening for her.

But even after this belief died, she still thought that as long as I was around, I knew what she was doing. Now, sadly, she has discovered that if I am not looking at her or I am not in the same room as her, she can do things and I don't see her doing them. Aha! So she's experimenting with this. Let's see, if Clara is bothering me and Mommy's not looking, then I can pinch her. Hmmm.....

Now this was not so bad before Lee learned the power of lying. I would come into the room, ask her what happened, and she would say "I pinched her." But recently Lee has also learned that she can say "I didn't do anything!"

There's a whole new leap in parenting skills required here.

2 comments:

Suzie said...

Hi - an old friend of Bridges/Will here, Steph S. just gave me your link. I have long joked that our son Malcolm was brought up in the baby monitor era and lately have seen the downside of this. He'll talk to me or call in a conversational tone no matter where he is in the house and no matter what I am doing. If he is upstairs and I am running the vacuum downstairs, he still seems to think I can hear him. I guess the problem is, I do somehow hear him even though we've done away with baby monitors. By saying 'Malcolm I can't hear you when I'm out here with the dishwasher on, stove sizzling, and heater fan blowing' I'm acknowledging I just DID hear him...

LeesMyth said...

Suzie, that's hilarious!