Master Manipulator Mommy

As I may have mentioned (here and to every other mother I've talked to in the past two weeks) Ironflower has been having a hard time leaving school. In fact, she has behaved better receiving shots than she has leaving school lately. On Tuesday, even though I made sure to drive around a bit so that Lovebug would fall asleep and thus stay in the car and I brought her juice, when I got to the playground Ironflower reacted the same old way. She screamed "No!" at the sight of me.

I did try not to take it personally. I really did. But I still cried on the way home. Though not as much as last time. I couldn't help it. This resulted in her receiving a rather stern talking to from a sympathetic Hot Guy. And a suggestion for how to react when school is over and Mommy comes to pick her up. But I didn't think it would help enough. So when I put her to bed that night (after I had calmed down considerably), I decided to really talk to her about it. Calmly, like you're supposed to. She couldn't verbalize her feelings, but I did find out (for sure) that it wasn't about me, it WAS that she liked school. So I told her a story about some of her favorite characters that included the whole situation.

And then Shrek, of course, learned to act the way I wished Ironflower would. And they lived happily ever after. I told her the same story Wednesday night. And reminded her of it in the car this morning. Just in conversation, of course. All natural-like. (Thank the Goddess that pre-schoolers thrive on repetitive conversations)

And today, when Ironflower saw me and her teacher began sending kids out of the gate, she smiled and ran to me and gave me a big hug. And I only feel slightly guilty about manipulating her to do so.