I hate you! Go to jail Mummy!

Is it that Charlotte’s been playing too much Monopoly? How could such hurtful words come from such an angelic face? It was whilst holidaying in the UK she first uttered these words. If it hadn’t been for a dear friend, who had her first child a few years before I entered the realm of motherhood, forewarning me that I would one day hear those words, I would have had a nervous breakdown!

Thankfully, my friends words of wisdom emerged from the depths of my memory and I managed to do some deep breathing, otherwise a number of expletives would have exploded from my mouth at the time! The thoughts running through my head were, ‘How could she! After all I’ve done for her! Selfish! Wicked!’. I do admit to going off on a bit of a rant, especially after she added, ‘I wish you were dead, go to heaven Mummy!’. It wasn’t as though these words came after I’d said ‘No’ to a bar of chocolate. They came after her father had missed Charlotte’s request to help put some shopping on the checkout counter in a shop and I took all the blame!

Since that outburst she’s continued, over the past month, with various versions on this theme, but thankfully not quite so strong. She has now tapered it down to the likes of, ‘You’re not my friend anymore. I don’t want you to sit next to me.’ She also tried these lines on her Grandparents and Aunty Claire. I’ve put all this down to yet another one of those trying ‘phases’ our children go through and have come up with some coping mechanisms of ignorance in the hope this phase passes as swiftly as it arrived.

On the Virgin Atlantic flight, during one of Charlotte’s episodes, a darling flight attendant (aka an Angel) brought me a HUGE Bailey’s on ice without me even having to press the call button.

Poor ‘Chicken Grandad’ got left at home with Charlotte on another rant, but this time he was in the firing line. Meanwhile ‘Chicken Grandma’, Sophie and I went to Marks and Spencers for some retail therapy. We phoned Grandad to check up on progress and he’d obviously moved mountains as he’d got Charlotte up to Fleet, to help with some banking, and taken her for a chocolate muffin! And the plot thickens… On our return home I noticed Charlotte holding a packet of crisps of a brand Grandma doesn’t usually have in her cupboard. When I asked where she’d got them from she said, ‘Grandad took me to the pub!’. So that’s the solution!

In all seriousness, I’m getting so much better at laughing off these ‘phases’. I try my hardest to model good behaviour. I steer clear of the temptation to enter into pointless argument with a four year old who has no real understanding of the meaning of her words (at least I hope she doesn’t!). I really enjoy the good moments, of which there are far more, and when she says, ‘I love you Mummy, so much,’ I listen hard and share all the love in the Universe with my beautiful daughter.

I look back over the past two years and see Charlotte growing so much. There was a time when she didn’t have words to express her frustrations. She’d cry, scream, throw a tantrum, hit out and almost hiss like Gollum from ‘Lord of the Rings’. Now she is trying to express herself in words, but has yet to learn how to properly articulate her feelings and emotions. It’s only natural that her words are sometimes a little too raw, but then many adults aren’t any better!

Thankfully, since returning to New Zealand, her behaviour has improved remarkably. Though she very much enjoyed her travels, she undoubtedly found it stressful too. She must have felt very confused at times away from her routines and home environment.