The other day, my kindergartner came home with a hole in her uniform shirt.

“How’d that happen?” I asked.

“I cut it with scissors,” she said matter-of-factly. Then, looking at my raised eyebrows, she quickly added, “It was an accident.”

I about to just tell her to be careful and let it go, but she continued on:

“I also cut my pants,” she said, showing off a bit of fraying in the hem of her shorts. “I tried to cut my sock, but I couldn’t.”

Sneaking a look at me, she protested again, “It was an accident!”

As I tried to explain how the word “trying” negated the word “accident” (in simpler terms, of course), my daughter, said, “I can see by your face that you think I’m cute.”

Why is it that moms on the page and on the screen can make a child cower with a single glance but my daughter can look past my frown and into my eyes to see what I really think? As she placed her palms on my cheeks to smush my lips into a smile, she insisted, “I can see that you’re really happy.”

Generally speaking, I really do want my children to be able to see on my face that they are loved, admired and accepted. In this particular instance, though, I wanted to stop being amused by the image of my daughter trying to cut through an athletic sock with those blunt scissors that can barely cut through a piece of construction paper. I wanted my face to clearly state, “It’s not okay to cut holes in your clothes.”

I also really wanted her to understand that calling something an accident wasn’t the same as apologizing or taking responsibility for doing something wrong. I had to maneuver carefully, though, making sure to keep all traces of humor out of my voice as I broached the issue and not letting her manipulate me when she said, “Now your voice doesn’t sound like you love me.”

I thought we’d reached an understanding. She knew I loved her. I assumed that she understood what an accident was.

The next day, I didn’t pack her swim suit because I thought I’d be picking her up before her afterschool swim class. It was a conscious decision on my part, because I figured if I was running late, I didn’t want to have to fish her out of the pool. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about a meeting in the afternoon, and by time I got to her, she had sat out her entire swim lesson.

I apologized and told her I made a mistake. “It’s okay,” she said. “It was an accident.”

I tried to explain that it actually wasn’t an accident, but she refused to listen. She forgave me because, as she pointed, accidents happen. “I still love you,” she said.

In this case, my accident was teaching her the wrong lesson.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 5:45 am and is filed under Family Tree. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.