My daughter is not shy, not shy at all, about finding one-on-one time with me. If she and I are doing something together and one of the boys approaches, she tells him fiercely, "Dat's MY mama." I say, "Sweetheart, I'm his mama too," but she is undeterred.
Tonight in the car my oldest was in the front seat, telling me about a complicated plotline, when his sister decided he'd had quite enough of my attention. "Dat's MY mama," she announced. "Stop talking!" she told him firmly. I sighed. I said to Alex, "Tell her who your mama is."
He jumped in instantly: "That's MY mama." From the back there were three immediate echoes from his brothers: "That's MY mama!" "That's MY mama!" "That's MY mama!" One of them added, "And it's MY couch too!" (she's been known to be territorial about the furniture); the rest of them quickly amended their shouts to include the couch as well. The din was impressive. Alex said to me, "If you keep laughing like that while you're driving, you're going to run into something."
"Okay," I said, "time to stop now." The cacophony ended quickly. In Stella's view this meant only that the last word was hers. "MY mama," she asserted. "Dat's MY mama."
Whenever the Duggars are mentioned in a blog post somewhere, the comments will include adults from large families talking about how little attention they received as children. This haunts me, even though five children << 19 children. I wonder often if my kids' needs are slipping through the cracks. I tell you what, though, I think if I were going to neglect my daughter I'd have to work at it.
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