I was in my 30s but still had yet to be a parent myself.
I was dating a beautiful single mother just slightly younger than me who had two kids.
Her daughter was four years old and was a spitting image of her mother.
The boy was two years old. He fit the textbook definition of a boy in his terrible twos.
I was inexperienced as a father, but I tried hard. I really liked their mother and wanted it to work out.
I had several years of experience as a high school teacher. How much different could raising young children be than teaching a bunch of teenagers math?
I went into the relationship with loads of unearned confidence.
I soon discovered that I was in over my head.
I was completely beaten by a preschooler.
It started over a pair of shoes. Her mother had bought the little girl a pair of shoes with heels.
They weren’t high heels but still, the child already stumbled when she walked barefooted. There was no way we were going to the grocery store with her in those shoes.
She thought otherwise. When I told her to go put on shoes, she came out in those dress-up shoes with the heels.
“No,” I said putting my foot down,” You are not wearing those. Go change your shoes.”
The mother looked at me but decided to let me handle this. I think she wanted to see how it would go.
“These are the shoes I want to wear,” the little girl insisted.
I carefully explained why that would be a bad choice and she flatly refused to go change.
Okay, I thought, I will teach her a lesson.
“You will just not go then,” I decided.
“What?” the mother asked, surprised.
“I am not taking her to the store in those shoes. She will have to stay home with you,” I said confidently.
“Oh, so now I have to stay home too?” my girlfriend looked at me hard.
“I guess so.” I said hesitantly with a lot less confidence.
My girlfriend simply said, “Alright then,” and sat down, kicking off her shoes and turning on the television.
I took the boy to the store and had to do all the shopping by myself and a two-year-old boy who would have rather stayed home with his mom and sister.
A forgotten shopping list and two temper tantrums later, I arrived home with one broken paper shopping bag and a crying two-year-old.
My girlfriend sat cuddled on the couch with her little girl drinking chocolate milk.
My first observation was that the little girl was still wearing the shoes I had insisted that she take off.
My second observation, the chocolate milk, reminded me that I had forgotten to buy milk.
We would just have to do without. I was not going to the store again.
An hour later, I decided on a different approach.
“Who wants to walk the dog with me?” I asked. It was one of the kids’ favorite activities.
“Me, me!” both children jumped up and down excited to go with me.
“Okay, go get your sneakers on so we can go,” I said to the girl.
“No, I want to wear these shoes,” she insisted.
The boy and I walked the dog by ourselves. I even let him hold the leash. He promptly let go of the leash. I spent thirty minutes chasing down the dog while trying to keep a hold of the boy on a fairly busy street.
When we got home, I was exhausted. My girlfriend just smiled at me. I noticed the little girl was still wearing the shoes. I ignored them.
That night, after dinner, I was washing the dishes when I heard the girl and her mother talking.
“I think I am done wearing these shoes now,” she said, “I am going to put them in the closet.”
After I finished the dishes, we sat down as a family to watch a movie.
The boy sat on one side of me, and the little girl cuddled up between my girlfriend and me.
Apparently, she had forgiven me, and we were friends again.
I am glad that a lesson was finally learned that day. Of course, I am the one that learned the lesson.
Never have a battle of wills with a four-year-old. It is an unwinnable battle.
Incidentally, I never saw those shoes again. I don’t know if the daughter decided never to wear them again or if the mother removed them from her closet when she had forgotten about them.
All I know was that I was absolutely the one in charge that day, right behind the mother, the daughter, the boy and the dog.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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