"You are the Parent."

Pre-parenthood, that sentence made total sense to me. You are the parent, you are the boss. The child needs to defer to you, and you need to do what it takes to impress this fact upon the child.

I stood at the counter at Trader Joe's this morning while Sawyer made consecutive screeching noises. I was explaining to the checker that last night was a long night: the moose bit the sharkey, Thomas couldn't find Percy, and the other fishy died and was flushed down the toilet in the box.

Luckily, I think the guy was stoned. He just asked me questions about how the moose got into the ocean, and wasn't that a tough fight between the moose and the shark? Sawyer continued to scream. I gently put my hand over his mouth but he didn't stop. I assessed the situation and knew, KNEW, he wouldn't stop screaming for anything, so I just ignored it.

I'm pretty sure people were staring at me. But don't they know that addressing the situation would only make things worse? Screaming? That's nothing!! He wasn't throwing things! He wasn't spitting!! He wasn't recreating a seizure in a cart!!! Screaming was the smallest thing he could do. I just wanted to tell people, "Oh, you think this is bad? Do you SEE these scratch marks? Just consider yourselves lucky you're not within arms' reach." But we don't get to explain to strangers do we?

You know what, me-from-3-years-ago? I AM the parent. And sometimes the bad behaviour is angelic compared to worse behaviour. So just suck it up and pray for bad behaviour.