I used to try and do these four times a year, now I am pleased if I get to them once a year. Lauca just turned eight years old. (Previous ones can be found here). I always follow up the “10 things I enjoy least” with the “10 things I enjoy most” post just in case you think I’m a very negative person.
1. Your argumentativeness. You know just enough to really be able to mount a good argument now against me and you don’t know enough to have the slightest bit of awareness about the limits of your knowledge. So, you think you’re absolutely right all the time and it is super tiring to argue with someone who has half-good arguments and the conviction of thinking she has fully-good arguments.
2. Hassling you about some of your eating habits and then worrying about whether you’re getting old enough now that hassling you about eating habits could cause eating disorders.
3. When you outsmart your little brother and let him know about it, for the fun of it – kinda cruel. When you do this in the car when I am racing to get you two to school and kindy and me to work.. it is the very last thing I need.
4. Knowing there are quite a few after-school activities that you would like to be learning and that would be really good for you but not having the time or the money to let you do them – violin, piano, rock-climbing, circus, Spanish etc. (You’re young, there’s still plenty of time).
5. How you finally figured out that I have not been putting pocket money aside for you each fortnight after all when I said I was and nor have I even been keeping a tally of it. The pocket money conspiracy gig is up – it was a good couple of years while it lasted. You really had no idea about the value of money, it was quite liberating.
6. You sneaking out of bed in the early mornings while I am still asleep to hack your way into your computer so you can play computer games on school days, and how it makes you tired and grumpy because you’re not getting enough sleep and how I half-wake when you do it but I don’t stop you because I want to keep sleeping.
7. Your Courtney Love melt-downs, which happen a lot less at the moment. I think a lot of this has been sorted out by taking the leap and letting you accelerate a couple of grades at school. (I worry that we’ve created a bit of a role for you at home that you will feel the need to stay with. And I think we would do well to emphasize your emotional resilience more with you rather than your highly strungness, but your father calls it delusional thinking when I try that).
8. You’re very untidy, you don’t take care of your things, you never know where you last put something, you often delay getting ready until the last minute. We keep saying we’ll figure out a system for you so you can fix this but it never seems to happen with you. That last one is probably my fault, anyway, because I say we’re about to go and I don’t always stick to that. You don’t work well under pressure either – so if I start to get really tense about the fact we’re running late somewhere and you’re still not getting ready and I tell you in a particularly cranky way that time is running out? You just collapse in a heap of wailing and I end up with more work to do and less time to do it in, because now I have to get you ready as well. In general, I lose my temper a lot more with you than I would like to be doing and in a much less decent way than I would like to be doing.
9. You still want to keep collecting stuffed toys. You still aren’t great at putting yourself to sleep. You will happily do sleep-overs though, so that’s something.
10. I still don’t get nearly enough time with you in a one on one way. I still find myself missing our old closeness.
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