I am the proud parent of two kids, but let's be frank, sometimes kids are jerks. When my daughter, Emery was three years old, she was as mean to me as a spoiled rich kid in the movies.
Objectively speaking, Emery was a beautiful little girl. She had big blue eyes and tiny little pigtails. Often times, when we were in public, people would stop and tell us how beautiful she was.
It happened so often that it would get awkward, especially if she was with other kids.
Her hair was so blond, it almost glowed. At the playground, Asian people would ask to touch her hair. However, for a whole year, any time that I did something for my adorable little girl, I walked on eggshells. Not literally, because as much as I loved her, there was no way that I would hand her a raw egg.
Sometimes, it wasn't worth fighting her. A few times, Emery would ask for something, I would get it, hand it to my wife, Leigha, and she would give it to our daughter.
One time, she asked Leigha for a drink. I happened to be standing at the refrigerator, so I grabbed a sippy cup filled with milk and gave it to Emery. As soon as I handed her the cup, she threw it to the floor and yelled, "Not from you!"
Finally, it reached a point where I was done. I was in an abusive relationship, and I kept going back, expecting different results. That's the definition of insanity. I was a grown man that was being emotionally abused by a toddler.
So one day when Emery was throwing both object and insults, I told her that if she wasn't kind to me, I wasn't going to tuck her in at bedtime that night. She continued with her behavior, and that night, when it was bedtime, I told her that I loved her, but I wasn't going to tuck her in. I also said to her that I hoped she was nice to me the next day, so I could tuck her in.
That night, she learned that I don't give threats, but I give warnings.
I assume it was this masterstroke of parenting that started her shift in behavior and not purely because of maturation.
When Emery and her older brother, Tate started going to school, I would wake both them and help them get started for the day. Every morning, Tate would wake with a smile, roll out of bed, ready to go and ask me to turn on the light.
Waking Emery was a different story.
I would slowly open the door, careful not to make too much noise and tiptoe to her window. Next, I would let in a sliver of light to the room and creep next to her bed. Slowly, I leaned onto the bed and whispered to her.
"Good morning, Pickle."
She went through a phase where she named all of her stuffed animals Pickle, so I did the same to her.
"Happy chicken nugget day."
I tried to start every morning on a positive note and would change this daily.
Happy hump day. Happy gymnastics day. Happy first day of Spring.
Without fail, this is how every morning followed:
Emery pulled the blankets over her head and rolled away from me.
"UGH! Stop yelling. Why is it so bright in here? I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to go to school. I'm not done sleeping."
If I happened to have given her a kiss on the cheek:
"Why are you licking me?"
"Do you want me to get something started for breakfast?" I whispered.
"What do we have?" she'd say as she pulled a pillow over her head.
"Cereal. Yogurt.
"Do we have any oatmeal squares left?"
"No, remember, we finished that yesterday."
She would throw off her blanket and yell out in exasperation.
"We never have anything good!"
"I could put a piece of toast in for an Emery deluxe."
An Emery deluxe is buttered toast with sugar and cinnamon. She came up with both the recipe and the name.
"How about a dippy egg?"
Dippy eggs are what we called over-easy eggs.
I'd look at my watch.
"How about this? I am going to take my shower now. Why don't you get up, get ready, get your lunch ready, then I will make you a dippy egg."
"Okay, but don't take too long. I'm starving to death."
For the entirety of Emery's life, she's been on the verge of death whether it was induced by boredom, cold, heat, but mostly from hunger. She gets that from my side of the family.
After my shower, I bypassed my own breakfast so that I could make one for Emery. I came into the kitchen and made her a dippy egg as she stood at my hip watching. The hardest part about cooking an over-easy egg is the flip. Avoiding the flip is the top reason for people to have eggs sunny side up. The key to flipping an over-easy egg is to be slow and methodical. I like to get the spatula under the yolk and roll the egg over.
Before I flipped the egg, I looked at the clock and saw that we only had a few minutes before we had to leave for school. On this particular attempt, as I rolled the egg, the membrane popped and the yolk ran onto the pan.
"I guess that one's yours," Emery said.
"No," I told her. "I'm not having an egg."
I slid it onto a piece of toast.
"Can you make me another?" she asked, her lips pouting, her eyes growing to the size of an anime character.
"Emery, I need to pack my lunch. Just eat it quickly before the yolk starts to cook. It's still runny."
She dropped to the ground as if she had been shot, tears flowing.
"They're not poppy eggs if you can't pop them," she yelled.
I kneeled down and ran my fingers through her hair.
"I'm sorry I popped it, but we need to move otherwise we'll be late. It will still taste the same."
"I'll just starve to death," she said as she stood and ran to her bedroom. I didn't follow her.
"Don't slam your---"
But I was too late, she slammed her door.
Emery has always been developmentally ahead of other kids her age. She was potty trained within a week of her older brother. She learned to speak early, often, and clearly. She was athletic. When it came to storming away, mood swings, or temper tantrums, Emery was fully prepared for her teenage years at a young age.
Much like a teenager, Emery was a whirlwind of commotion. Often times, there would be a trail of clothes where she took off a jacket, stepped out of one shoe, and kicked the other across the room as she pulled her pants off because she was hot.
"I know, I know. I'll pick these up after I get a drink. I'm about to die of thirst."
Then she would cartwheel her way to the sink. Emery has been doing gymnastics since she was three years old. One of the first skills that she mastered was doing a cartwheel. In kindergarten, I once got a note from her teacher that she had been moved to the back of the class during carpet time because Emery kept accidentally kicking other kids when she performed tumbling moves. She never intentionally attacked others, but you were always at risk of getting kicked when she was around.
Despite her claims, she never picked up her piles after the first time she was asked. She was always doing something and about to do something else, and could never be bothered to be interrupted by something as trivial as picking up after herself.
Every Saturday, our household does chores. Things like vacuuming, laundry, and general cleanup. Eventually, instead of having her stop cleaning whatever she was working on, I would gather her things from around the house and put them on a pile in front of her bedroom door. I thought it saved her the step of doing this, and she only had to put the items away.
She saw it differently.
Here is a typical scenario when she saw the pile in front of her door.
"Daddy!" she yelled, "How many times do I have to tell you, I hate when you do that? Why don't you put a pile of things in front of Tate's door?"
"I do," I said as I pointed at the single item that he had left lying around the house.
"UH!" she yelled as she threw out her arms. "Can you close the door?"
"Sure," I said as I slid the pile into her room with my foot. I started to close the door and saw a collection of items piled atop the wooden stand outside Emery's room. "Actually---"
But before I could finish, the door was slammed in my face. I pushed the door open.
"Excuse me?" I said. "It's not my fault that you leave your stuff lying all around the house."
Emery stared at me, her teeth clenched. Her head was tilted forward slightly, her eyes slits. Smoke may have been coming out of her ears.
"I'm so mad at your stupid face right now," she said.
"I'm sorry to hear that because I love your stupid face," I said as I grabbed the door handle. "Why don't you work on your pile and I'll come back in half an hour."
After an extended time of grunting and minor banging from the other side of the door, I came back to Emery's room.
I knocked lightly.
"Come in," she said.
When I walked into the room, Emery was sitting on the floor, organizing something at the foot of her bed. The room was neat and orderly.
"Wow, it looks a lot nicer in here," I said and sat on the edge of her mattress.
She looked up at me and pouted her bottom lip out.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you," she said.
"I appreciate your apology," I said.
"It's just..." she trailed off. "You know I don't like it when you put a pile in my doorway, I don't know why you always do it."
"Much like how I don't like when you leave piles of things all through the house."
"Maybe next time you can ask me, and I'll pick everything up."
"Okay," I said.
She stood and gave me a hug.
I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head.
"I meant it, you know," I told her. She stepped back and looked me in the eyes.
"Meant what?"
"I love your stupid face."
Emery and I interact with one another in a much different fashion than Leigha and Emery do. We have a running joke where Emery asks me who my favorite daughter is. I tell her my best friend's kid.
Another thing we do is call each other absurd names.
"You're a stupid, ugly chicken face," she said to me.
"Oh yeah, you're a dumb, stupid poopy face," I returned. "And you have bad breath."
The crazy things we say to one another have to be so over the top, there's no way the other would actually believe anything that was said. It is also crucial to have a cache of positive things to tell one another built in advance.
I tell my wife and kids that I love them every day, and I mean it each time. I tell them that they are smart, beautiful, and funny. And that I'm a lucky man to have them in my life.
But to prevent Emery from crossing over from confident to cocky, I have to sucker-punch her in the stomach every once in a while. To be clear, I never really hit her. Most times, I don't make contact with her at all, and when I do, it is a small bump. Every time she returns the favor with a full-blown punch to my stomach.
For some reason, Leigha and Emery don't do this.
I am also comforted in knowing that if hypothetically, I forgot to pull my punch, Emery could take the hit.
She has rock-hard abs from all of her gymnastics. On top of the exercises she receives at her sport, she consistently self-manages her conditioning. Whether it is handstands against the side of the couch, crunches while she watches tv or doing pull-ups instead of walking past the laundry room doorframe, she is always pushing herself.
Emery loves almost everything about gymnastics. During her practices, she is focused and determined to make herself a better athlete. While she isn't unfriendly, she doesn't go to the gym to make friends. Emery is there to put in the work.
Roughly once a quarter, she has a gymnastics meet. The meets are a time to showcase her skills, and she loves them. To me, they are a time to watch her stand in line for half an hour while twenty other girls do the exact same routine. Then we get to watch her do her version of the minute-long activity. I enjoy watching her perform, but the wait between events is brutal. Typically, Emery is one of the top overall performers in each event, especially the floor routine.
During one of these meets, Leigha and I were cheering Emery on from the balcony. Our daughter had the top score on the floor and a third-place finish on the beam when we noticed that she was running funny. She was warming up for the vault, and it looked like she was trying to touch her shoulder to her hip every time she took a step.
"Is she hurt?" I asked Leigha.
"I don't know," she said.
"She's running really weird," I said.
"Yeah, I noticed that, too."
I made eye contact with Emery and gave her a thumbs up. She returned the gesture with a weak smile.
Eventually, when it was her turn to do the event for real, she started running down the runway toward the vault. It looked like she was running for the first time after being in a whole-body cast for six months. She pounced on the springboard and flailed her hands and legs as she flew over the vault. It was amazing that she landed on her feet.
On her second attempt, Emery trotted down the runway at a slower pace, and when she jumped on the springboard, she didn't have enough forward momentum to move past the vault. Pretty much, she popped up to the padded table, did a handstand, held it for a few moments, then walked to the end of the board with her hands and dropped to the ground. After landing on a padded mat, she threw her hands in the air, smiled, and ran off the main floor.
The whole display was a complete mental implosion, and it was devastating to watch.
"I'll go talk to her," I told Leigha as I pushed away from my uncomfortable plastic chair.
As I walked down the stairs, I could hear Emery talking to herself in the restroom.
"C' mon Emery, you can do this," she said. She let out a long, deep breath. "Comeoncomeoncomeon."
She emerged, her face covered with red splotches from crying. I opened my arms, and she buried her face in my armpit and continued to cry.
"Are you okay?" I asked. "Are you hurt? Did you hurt your leg or hip?"
"No," she said. She pulled away from me and wiped at her eyes.
"What happened?"
"I don't know."
She fanned at her face and looked at the ground.
"I got scared," she whispered, a tremble in her voice.
I hooked my finger under her chin and raised her face to mine.
"It's just one event," I told her.
"I can't get top overall," she said.
"No matter what happens with your last event, I'm proud of you. It's amazing what you can do. You can do things that I never have and never will be able to do. You're a great gymnast, and I'm proud of you. So you had a bad day on the vault. We all have bad days, but don't let it define you."
She leaned forward, and I wrapped my arms around her head.
"You can do this," I whispered to her.
She turned around, shook her hands, and took a step away from me.
"Emery," I said.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder.
"I love your stupid face," I said to her.
"I love your stupid face," she replied. She smiled, nodded, and walked toward the gym.
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