“You look at me with your eyes in tears…and then it’s raining, feels like it’s raining…oh no, tears are falling!” KISS wrote “Tears Are Falling” about a broken relationship, but these lyrics can be applied to many school day mornings in my house.
My wife is here for the early part of the morning, but when she leaves for work, drama often ensues with Little One. The enigmatic 6-yr old is both fiercely independent and totally dependent at the same time, which makes for some interesting struggles where no outcome is ever satisfactory.
Today, like many other days, I was treated to the Little One fashion show where she puts on an outfit, shows it to me, I tell her that she looks very cute, and she instantly goes back into her room to put on something entirely different. The cycle continues until the tension starts to mount as I pressure her to make a final decision because the time to leave is fast approaching. Once the “tears are falling,” there is almost nothing that I can say or do to get her dressed, ready and smiling. No outfit is ever the right one, and anything she ends up with is merely settling.
As I watched the “Tears Are Falling” video (below), it struck me that KISS and my daughter have an eerily similar taste in clothing, Paul Stanley in particular. I couldn’t help but wonder if “tears are falling” in Paul’s eyes when he looks back at this frightening moment in time, but I digress…
Once Little One is finally dressed, albeit displeased with the look of the day, the next battle arises about which toy to bring with her in her backpack. There are some things that we don’t allow her to bring for various reasons, but as her frenzy reaches a fever pitch and the minutes are ticking away, I start to relax my rules as much as possible to complete my mission of getting the kids to school on time. However, like the outfit situation, there is no toy that will ever be perfect, so she has no choice but to settle for good enough.
I got the kids to school on time, so I won this battle, but the war is far from over.
Just another day in the life of Hard Rock Daddy!
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