My Daughter The Mimic

I've told a few people these stories, but just in case you haven't heard them here you go.

Tessa is at the age where she repeats/processes/imitates much of what she hears. Most of the time I think I'm pretty good about what I say in front of her. Unless I'm tired or frustrated, then all bets are off.

Here's an example of unfortunate mimicking. One Wednesday I was home with all three kids. Patterson would not stop crying. Really, no matter what I tried it was over 45 minutes of crying-and the boy is loud. Needless to say my patience ran out, and I said to him "Patterson, please stop crying. Just shut up for five minutes." Not the usual tone I take with the kids, but again I said it to him, I didn't yell.

Well, maybe I should have yelled as Tessa heard me say it, and since I said it as calmly as possible, the phrase didn't raise any red flags for her. So a little later on it was nap time. I put her in her room, and the first thing she did was go to her stuffed turtle and say "Shut up Simon. No crying."

Ouch. Way to hurt a guy, Tessa. So then we had to have the whole conversation about how we don't say "shut up" and Daddy made a mistake and all that. So I've tried to be a little more intentional about saying things better, especially to the babies.

Her other mimic moment happened just a few weeks ago. It was early morning and I was trying to get Tessa up and out of bed. In true Brink fashion, she did not want to get out of bed. She was saying stuff like "No Daddy, don't wake me up." Even as I changed her diaper and changed her clothes she was saying "Quit waking me up." She resisted at all opportunities. She refused to move, making her body limp in an attempt to keep me from lifting her. She argued with everything I said, I've never heard the word "no" so many times in a row before.

Being a night person in the mornings is difficult. I'm tired when I wake, have little patience, and one or more things on me hurt. So obviously I lost it.

I picked the girl up and put her over my shoulder to go downstairs to breakfast. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I know that I was yelling at her about her behavior (and yelling at a child to behave is counter productive, I know, but how good are you at 5:30 a.m.)?
I remember yelling "We shouldn't have to do this, Tessa! You need to follow instructions and eat your cereal. Don't mess around in the mornings. I don't want to yell Tessa! I don't like having to do this first thing in the morning!!!"

Well, after breakfast we were getting her dressed for the day. Tessa has a game where she pretends to be a different person in the family and she assigns you another person to be. Sometimes she's Mommy, Melody is Tessa, Mommy is Dora the explorer and Daddy's Patterson. Vivid imagination on that one.

So she says to me "You Tessa and I be Daddy". Well, here's my chance to be a wiseacre. "I'm Tessa?" I asked. "Okay."

I put on my whiniest voice, "Don't wake me up Daddy. Quit waking me up."

She looked me in the face, called up the deepest voice she could muster and said "I don't wanna do this Tessa. I no like to yell Tessa!"

Damn, she got me. And I couldn't do a thing about it because she was right. And it was funny. And I deserved it. But it's still a little embarrassing.

Oh well, at least it's better than that time she yelled "cock" in the library. But only just.