Remember Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day? Nothing goes right for him: his brother punches him, he falls in a mud puddle, he doesn't get to pick the sneakers he likes and, to add insult to injury, his mom serves lima beans for dinner. I always think back to that book whenever one of my own kids has a bad day--not just a Bad Day, but a terrible, horrible, no-good bad day. Those kind ofdaysare special and in a class all by themselves. I also think about how different kids' bad days are from grown-ups' bad days.Our bad days can be really bad, filled with grumpy bosses, unexpected bills,spilled coffee,too-much-paperwork, and the general feeling that you should have just stayed in bed that day--called it quits before you even left the house. But still we grown-ups rant and rage about our bad days, and we're transformed suddenly into kids again, stomping around the house, pointing fingers, and looking for someone to make it right again.
T. and I both had our own bad days together this week. Yesterday I came home feelingovertaxed already with work, and grouchy and inclined to fuss. I was definitely no uber-mom. I had spilled an entire box of raisin bran in the morning, the dog chewed up a pull-up, I couldn't find a good parking spot on campus, the copier jammed, and I found a roach under my desk at work. Back at home, the kids were alternately too loud, then too whiny, then too...bored.
"Find something to do!" I snapped at them finally.
And poor T.--a boy at the pool told her she couldn't play ball with the other kids because she was "too little" (he's a year younger than she is), the pool concession stand was out of red jolly-pops, I wouldn't let her have juice before dinner, and herfavorite shirt got wet when Scott made her wash her hands before dinner. She stubbornly refused to change it, even though the wet spot on the front made her mad. Really mad.
"I havin' a BAD DAY!" She raged, little fists clenched into angry balls at her side.
Then she slammed a door. Then she was sent promptly to the naughty step. After dinner, lip still trembling from the injustice of it all, I invited her to walk the dog with me. She climbed into her stroller, eyes red from crying, her favorite shirt still wet, and some rice clinging to the patchwork flowers on the front. She was Bad Day incarnate, really, and looked like how I myself felt, earlier in the day (minus the rice) when I had to walk what seemed like miles to class.
"All bad days come to an end," I told T. "I had a bad day, too."
"Is your bad day over?" T. asked me, cheering up.
"It sure is," I told her, feeling better myself. That's the thing with bad days--we grown-ups know they come and go. We can see through to the end of them most times, and that little voice of reason in our ear tells us constantly not to sweat the small stuff, take a deep breath, count to ten. But when you're a kid, the bad day seems never-ending, injustice after injustice piled one on top of the other. It's hard to be four, sometimes; bad days seem extra big and that out-of-control, the-universe-is-against-me feeling is a hard thing to learn about, really.
Today we're making Bad Day Cookies. Stay tuned for the recipe.