I have a little girl. That’s nothing stupendous or ridiculously amazing. A lot of us have little girls. Some of us have big girls that used to be little girls. Either way, there are plenty of fathers out there with daughters. That’s not the point. The point is, before her – I have two boys. They aren’t full grown yet – still being elementary school age – but they are old enough to not get a story read before bed. They are old enough to get sent to bed with less than a kick in the ass and usually no arguing and little yelling. They go.
Not her.
At least, not when I tell her to. There is screaming, following by multiple “no’s” followed by whining, then laughing at me when I start counting. Then, “I want mommy to read to me!” And mommy does. And once again, I lose. I put my head down and sulk back to the living room – where I have my occassional glory by being the one that gets to play all the annoying (loud) games with her. While I enjoy that time with her, what’s with the mommy love at bedtime?
I think I have it figured out. It’s actually pretty simple and now that I think about it – I’m basically stating the obvious. It’s because my wife is a stay at home mom and my daughter is well, a stay at home three year old. So she’s with mommy all day long, so it’s only natural that she’d want mommy at her weakest point of the day – bedtime. It must be a girl thing. The boys wanted me to read them a story and put them to bed, even though the wife was a stay at home mom at that point as well. So that must have been a guy thing right?
The point is (that I rarely make one, but I’ll try) is that it is the battle of the sexes when it comes to raising multiple children of different genders. The girls tend to gravitate towards mom in the young stages, the boys gravitate to dad. I’m talking nuclear family dynamics here. However, I can fully predict that when she is older, she’ll be coming to me rather than to mom because no matter what she’ll always be my little girl. Awh. That’s freaking sweet right? Like vidalia onion sweet. So how can I battle back and get her into my favor at bedtime? How can I be the one she begs for to read her stories? Well, for one I can stop making up my own stories, I think she actually wants me to read the books as they are, not as I’m picturing them in my head.
I just lost my train of thought. Maybe that’s a problem too. Basically, as she starts going to preschool and notices that she has two parents, I’ll be the one reading her stories at night. Or I won’t. Either way, I’ll always be around and there for her and I think that’s what matters the most. It’s sometimes a bit hard to take when she wants nothing to do with me for no good reason. But I suppose that’s what having a girl is all about. It’s certainly nothing like having boys. That’s for sure.
Curtis Silver suffers from being too awesome and routinely rambles more than a 1972 Pinto on the highway. You can catch him on Twitter @cebsilver
Good thing about girls man, is that typically they are always around the family as they get older and have families of their own.