quite the character

If I had any idea what I am doing, this would probably be easier. The parenting, I mean.

We're home on a Sunday morning after an unsatisfactory late night, but if our human alarm clock snoozed until nearly nine a.m., then surely baby Jesus will understand that she must have sorely needed the sleep. Father and daughter decide to run for doughnuts and in the minimal getting-ready it comes out that the Packer cap he procured from the hallowed halls of Lambeau may just be out at the Girl Scout campground. Or in some mom's car. Or somewhere else it has no business being, though she has no idea where. Definitely not here.

Breakfast shall be delayed.

By the time we get to through the sorting out and the scolding, the where is it, why did you have it, and how will you get it back, my daughter is in tears though the only voice that has been raised in the one that's in her head. And I can't help saying, "Please stop crying because that just isn't helping," as if that instruction's not ridiculous. But it turns out, once we're through with the bits about responsibility and not touching other people's stuff without permission and the phone calls she will make to coordinate the search and rescue, it turns out she's concerned it's a sign of her essential character.

She even uses the c-word to describe all the times she's left her homework at school as further proof of her failure. "If it's something I always do," she continues, "isn't that my character?" And I bite my tongue against the low-blood sugar sarcasm on the tip of my tongue and instead try to say something constructive about the difference between character and behavior and habit, and, again, how she just needs to slow down and pay attention to what she's doing starting right now. Just make a little effort.

She's not really into that, effort. So much has always come easily. But to be so willing to chalk it up mistakes to "that's just the way I am?" I don't know where that notion comes from, but we'll be having none of it, except I don't know how to make her stop. Is this her flair for the dramatic? hormones? or, as my gut tells me, one of those negative things she really believes? Perhaps I should just slow down and pay attention. Just make a little effort. Figure out with what we're dealing. But first, I'm going to have that doughnut. And maybe she'll find that cap.