What no one told me about parenting

How can I talk about my relationship with Jasmine without sounding corny or even naive? Jasmine loves being in a relationship, both with me and with her daddy. We have increasingly unique relationships with her and as these relationships deepen we are each challenged and rewarded in different ways.

Jasmine loves me with every fiber in her being. She lives and breathes for me. When we are together, no matter how many days in a row it is, she wants constant physical closeness with me. When we spend our 3 day weekends together, I am never out of eyesight from her and we spend most of our time snuggling, playing, looking into each other's eyes and communicating in a variety of ways. I find our relationship to be extraorinarily intense, something I had no way of preparing myself for. I did not know what a parent/child relationship could be like on this end. I did not know that having a relationship with a 2 year old could be this profound, this wonderful, this exhausting. And it's certainly not the playing that exhausts me the most, but the constant engagement. Jasmine never tires of interacting and expects the highest level of ouput from me.

So tonight when she threw a fit during dinner and refused to eat (after she had a brilliant day with her dad and a fantastic weekend with her mama and nagymama), I had to take a hard stand. I let her know in no uncertain terms that if she wouldn't eat, I would not play with her or read her books or interact with her in our normal way (and let me just say that putting her to bed without dinner is not an option--she really needs food to sleep well). I was not angry or impatient, but I withdrew the part of myself from her that she cherishes the most and I told her why many times.

So here's what she did. She agreed to take a bath and handed all her toys to us, knowing that she was not supposed to play with me. She said several times "no book". She didn't throw another fit during her bath, or after she got out. She didn't cling to me or try to whine her way into my arms. And when I suggested that she go back to her chair and eat her dinner, and we could read and play and snuggle, she responded with an enthusiastic "YAH", climbed into her chair and was immediately rewarded with smiles and praise and food and kisses and applause. I could not believe that our 2 year old was able to regulate her emotions, respect my limits, make a choice for herself that reversed course for the evening. Jasmine was not scared that I would stop loving her. She was not shamed into feeling bad about herself. She recognized what I consider to be a very sophisticated relationship dynamic and decided for herself what was important.

I find myself humbled by this relationship. Me, who spends all day long talking to people about their relationships and having to be in relationships with my clients, am brought to my knees by my 2 year old daughter, who already gets it.