An Interesting Revelation

When it comes to personalities, Sue Sue is typically my most outgoing daughter. She's chatty. She's friendly. She's precocious and precious. She's also extremely stubborn. She knows what she wants. Her favorite phrase right now is "Why should I?" She is what my mother meant when she said one day I would have a daughter just like me. And yet, she is still the sweetest thing ever.
One night during our vacation each of the girls had a small personal container of ice cream. Sue Sue picked mint chocolate chip. She delighted my family (some of whom she was meeting for the first time) by eating her ice cream and repeatedly pointing out that I never buy mint chocolate chip ice cream. According to her I only buy "boring vanilla." (This is not true. Sometimes I do buy mint chocolate chip, but overall we don't have a lot of ice cream in the house). Then she pointed out that whenever the ice cream truck drives by the house, I never let her buy ice cream. (This is true. I'm not shelling out money for overpriced ice cream from a creepy dude in a truck). At this point we had just spent two days on the road. I was exhausted. Out of exasperation I said "Well, I guess I'm just the meanest mom in the world." Sue Sue looked at me, stunned and said "No. You are not a mean mom. You're pretty nice." I hope this has nothing to do with the fact that one of the movies we watched in the car was Annie. Compared to Miss Hannigan, I'm the best mom on the planet!

Because I Said So

Apparently age 5 is the age where everything you tell a child is met with "Why?" "It's time to clean this room." "Why?" "You can't play video games right now." "Why?" "It's time to go to bed." "Why?" I'll admit it, I'm guilty of responding with "Because I said so" or "Because I'm your mother" on more than one occasion. 
I've gotten to a point where I just can't keep explaining myself. One of my girls uses "why" as a delay tactic. If she doesn't want to clean, then she'll go into "why-mode." I used to explain to her in great depth why she needed to clean up. Rather than say "Because I said so," I've started responding with "Because if you make a mess, it's your job to clean it up." 
I really do try to provide my daughters an answer when they have a "legitimate" question. If their "why" has more to it than that, I try my best to have a good response. "Why are the clouds so big?" "Why do we sleep when it's dark out?" Those are "whys" I can handle, although sometimes I need the Internet to help me out. 
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