Recently, I’ve been wowed, impressed, and most of all thrown off of my parenting game by the logic and persistence of my seven year old.
While her interests seem to come (and go) in waves, her most recent request for a baby sister is hanging around much longer than I’d like.
It’s really funny. First, I try to explain that in order for me to have a baby, I should be married. (It’s the way I roll.)
“But,” she reasoned, “you have Brett and me, and you aren’t married.”
Sigh. This is the time I realize that gone are the days of pacifying my kiddos with a simple answer to any question they pose, and when I have to remind her that when they were born, I was married; that I didn’t enter the realm of the Single Mama until I got a divorce.
“Well,” she said (wheels turning) “I think I know a really nice guy for you. My PRINCIPAL!” She’s also commented on people we run into out and about, and once decided that because a man winked at me at the gas station that he thought I was beautiful and wanted to marry me.
Not good. Now she’s on the hunt to find not my soul mate, but the papa for her dream baby sister.
When I first got divorced, I was getting clobbered from every angle by friends, colleagues, neighbors and even vague acquaintances trying to set me up with “so-and-so,” who was always “really great,” and “blah, blah, blah.” I never imagined that one of these forces would be my own offspring!
I’m trying to prove to my kids that I don’t need some nameless, faceless entity to make my life whole. So how do I do this?
So far, my approach has included the following:
- I laugh with her when she tries to set me up, and agree with her when we see a “cute one.”
- I tell them constantly that I don’t need to be in a relationship to be happy!
- I remind them that happy families come in all shapes and sizes; that they are my focus, and that when the time is right, maybe I will get involved again.
At the end of the day, I stand by my conviction. I really hope that my theory that they’ll get a stronger sense of themselves holds true, and that they learn much earlier than I did about what it really takes to have an awesome relationship.
C’mon. Who else out there has gone through this? Who else has dealt with similar efforts and requests by well-meaning children? I want to hear from you!
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