Graduation Day

"You need to talk to your daughter," Michele informed me this morning.  Sunday mornings are not, admittedly, my finest hour.

"Oh?  Why?"

"She wants to run away."

That old chestnut.  "Really?" I smirk.

"Yes.  Apparently you yelled at her this morning and now she says she has to run away."

Those words, a knife in the heart; my smugness evaporates.  Yes, we'd had an altercation over breakfast - she'd wanted her eggs sunny side up, I'd made them over easy, her tone was disrespectful, I'd made her apologize.  But really.  Running away?

I talked to Caroline, explained the importance of her learning to express what she wants in a way that isn't disrespectful, especially to the guy who'd just spent half an hour making your breakfast.  Told her that the mature thing to do in such situations is to ask for feedback later about how the interaction could have been handled differently (obviously I used less management-speak).  Explained what "mature" meant.  Told her that, if she'd wanted her eggs sunny side up and knew that I was making eggs, she could have shown some ownership and told me what she wanted ahead of time instead of moaning about it later.  Pointed out that her plan to run away was full of holes (where would she sleep?  what would she eat?).  Asked what I could have done differently, and we talked about that.  In short, I made all of the logical, rational, paternalistic noises you'd expect someone to make in such a case.

But none of it really made either of us feel much better.

I've had an anxious knot in my stomach all day.  Not because I think that she'll actually run away, but because I seem to be unable to get through to her as I used to.  She says she understands what we talked about this morning, but she's still acting oddly.  In fact, she has been for a few days, so I'm not convinced that her current behavior is entirely down to me, at least I'd prefer not to think so.  But I don't know what it IS related to.  Did something happen at school?  One of her friends does, shall we say, like to stir things up a bit.  But why, then, would she threaten to run away?  She said recently that Michael gets more attention than she does.  Could that be it?  The last few days of every school term are difficult; between friends moving away, leaving others for the summer and just being really tired from the long school term,  there are always more than the normal number of tears around this time.

Parenting-wise, we've had a relatively easy time of it so far.  Both of the kids are healthy.  They are remarkably well-behaved, reasonably well-socialized, and generally get along well with us and each other.  I don't think either of them are afraid of me.  So many of the photos I have taken of them at odd moments show them laughing and happy and just enjoying life.  But people are complex, even at age eight, and  something tells me that this is not the last time this sort of thing will happen.  I fear that we're entering the preteen years, and with them the start of long rather unpleasant period of moodiness, anger and apathy (the kids will probably be hard to deal with, too).

I'm sure it's a period not without its rewards, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it.