A new trend, or maybe not so new, maybe just a new awareness on my part, finally putting the pieces together: Bella frequently gets very insistent about reading books when there’s an underlying issue such as hunger or tiredness. Often when I find myself frustrated by the tenth repetition of “please, again,” when I think I’m going to explode because I just can’t stand the thought of reading that particular book one more time, it’s then that I start to notice that I’m hungry or thirsty or tired. And I also find that if I ignore her crying and protesting and drag her to the kitchen (yes, with the tears rolling down her face) for a snack, she is usually quite ready to wolf down large quantities of food as soon as she gets over being upset. Aha! I finally realized, maybe the insistence about the books isn’t really about the books, maybe she’s expressing a need that she doesn’t really understand. She can’t decipher the hungry feeling so she’s asking to be read to.
So my dilemma: Can I take a manic insistence to read a particular book as a helpful road sign to let me know when a snack or meal is necessary? Is there another sign I could be intercepting earlier? The problem is that I often feel like I’m being selfish when I know my real reason for wanting to adjourn to the kitchen is an intense desire NOT to read the book again. And yet experience has shown me that in fact Bella may really need to be interrupted at precisely that moment because otherwise the reading may lull her to an early nap, from which she wakes up too soon resulting in a tired and cranky little girl.
I don’t like the idea of shutting her up and refusing her requests that I read books. In part because I know that this is an area where I need to learn to grow. I want to learn to die to my own selfish desires and to give her the attention and love she needs when she asks for it, to not put her off with “just a minute, mommy’s busy”. I know my motives are mixed and I have a bad habit of diverting her or putting her off not because I think it’s good for her but because I’m selfishly caught up in doing my own thing and don’t want to tend to her request right now. I get hungry and cranky too and all too often I let that get the better of me and don’t treat her with the love and solicitude she deserves.
I don’t think there’s an easy answer. For us it’s always going to be a question of discernment in the moment rather than following a schedule. I’m never going to be one of those by-the-clock mothers who move from one activity to another with smooth determination, going from play time to craft time to reading time with preset meal times and nap times all neatly laid out on a grid. I’m always going to be flying by the seat of my pants to some degree or other. That’s part of my personality and I’ve come to a sort of truce with it, at least realized that fighting to imitate the naturally hyper-scheduled only results in worse effects than accepting my preference for flow and adaptability and serendipity. But that also leaves me open to the temptation to delay, one more thing and one more and one more before I drop what I’m doing to give Bella my full attention.
