I was immersed in a cookbook trying to decide if Betty Crocker conspired to kill America with saturated fat when I heard a weary voice from behind the bathroom door.
“Mama, can I come out now?”
There are many times of the day a mother feels guilty in the art of raising children. One of those times is when she realizes her child just served what was supposed to be a four-minute timeout for forty-five minutes. So much for “I don’t need to set the timer. I’ll just remember to get her out at 4:42.”
Timeout: the ultimate fix to atrocious behavior of just about any kind. In this case, the offense was excessive use of potty talk at the table (thus, a dose of solitary confinement with the object of her fascination, the potty itself). One minute per year—or four minutes for a four-year-old—is all it takes to magically transform a set of devil’s horns into a halo. In proportion, you would think forty-five minutes would’ve turned my potty-spewing preschooler into Mother Theresa.
Not so. Even before I became a parent, after a decade of teaching I came to the conclusion that the underlying difference between girls and boys is that girls hold grudges. Punish a boy, and he loves you five minutes after the fact. It is unknown when a girl stops resenting you, because long before she recovers from one consequence, she is onto another.
“Mama, why did you forget about me?” Eva demanded, little legs poking out of her Tinkerbell nightgown, lips puffed in full pout mode.
My mind raced with how I could make it up to her. Mathematically speaking, seeing how she served forty-five minutes instead of four, she had, in fact, served 11.25 consecutive timeouts, and rounded to the nearest minute, that meant she was entitled to get off scot free for her next ten misdemeanors. Usually these misdemeanors make me too livid to consider mathematical reasoning or freebees, but it was a comforting thought to tuck away as I consoled my wild-haired princess after serving her over-sentence with the commode.
And as I tried to kiss the pout clear off her face, I saw my little girl morph into a teenager, when a timeout in her room would undoubtedly transition from punishment to reward. What do I have to do around here to score my own thirty-nine minutes of solitary confinement?