Sadie McStubbornson

Our son the paleontologist, seeking clues as to why his sister is so stubborn.

The terrible twos have arrived with a vengeance. Our daughter, who used to be the epitome of sweetness and light, is now, well, kind of a jerk. There. I said it.

Don't get me wrong, I love her dearly. (Most of the time.) But boy, when she decides to fight you on something, you'd better come packin'.

Take last night, for example. Wife bought the family a new Wii. (Yay Wife!) We were busy setting it up and I told the kids to go upstairs and play until it was ready. About 2.3 seconds later they got into a bit of a squabble, culminating in her crumpling up one of his paintings. Screaming ensued. So, I went upstairs, sussed out the situation, and told Sadie to apologize to her brother. She refused, crossing her arms, and looking down at the floor in her stance of defiance. I sat down next to her and said, "Sadie, it's not nice to ruin Soen's paintings..." blah blah blah... "please say you're sorry to Soen."
"No!"
I told her to look at me. She closed her eyes and turned away, which has the effect of really annoying me and cracking me up at the same time.

We went back and forth a bit, with me getting more stern until finally I pulled out the trump card: "Sadie, if you want to play with the new toy, then say you're sorry to your brother."
"No!"
"Do you want to play with the new toy?"
"Yes."
"Then say you're sorry."
"No!"
"Say you're sorry to your brother. Then we can go play with the new toy."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Now, if I had been asking her to actually do something onerous, like clean her room or go to bed, I could understand her reluctance. But really? Saying you're sorry? At this point, I wouldn't have cared if she didn't mean it--after all, this really wasn't how I wanted to be spending my evening--I just wanted her to say the stupid words so we can get on with our lives. (Did I mention there was a brand new Wii waiting for me?)

Eventually she was put in time out and once the screaming finally stopped she went ahead and apologized to Soen as though the previous ten minutes hadn't happened. And we all played golf.

I fear for her teen years.

In case you're wondering, Soen trounced us. He hit a beautiful approach shot and wound up parring the hole. I bring this up because, having no concept of how you play golf, he was kind of upset that everyone else got to take so many more turns than he did. And all my talk about how he was so much better than the rest of us was wasted on him. He was like, Yeah I just want to hit the ball some more.