When Your Kid Hates You…

Can you relate to this mom? Have one of your kids ever done something like this?

On the way home from my daughter’s first day of preschool I felt, not for the first time since becoming a mother, an overwhelming burst of emotion.

I was overcome with the desire to give my kid the middle finger—with both hands.

I should have known where the day was headed before it even began. We’d been talking up preschool all summer. The night before the big day, she couldn’t fall asleep. She woke up earlier than usual, complaining of a stomachache that even a pink, berry-flavored Tums couldn’t cure.

The drop-off went smoothly. When school let out, I was waiting outside the school with the baby on my hip. Chloe looked tiny, as she emerged through the school’s double doors. I watched as her eyes, ringed with purple circles, squinted in the bright sun, scanning the sea of waiting parents, oblivious to my waving and calling her name. When her gaze fell on the school bus, her furrowed brow finally relaxed.

“Chloe!” I called again.

When our eyes met, she began to wail. It was then that I noticed the card she clutched in her left hand. On it was a cartoon rendering of a school bus. In black marker were the words “Chloe R. #609.”

I had no idea who Chloe R. was or whether she’d gotten on the right bus. I only knew that Chloe M., my Chloe, was ugly crying on the school’s front steps while yelling, “I don’t want to go with you! I’m taking the bus!”

I rolled my eyes and smiled at the other parents, as if to say, “Kids and their shenanigans! Don’t you hate when your kid acts like you’re a kidnapper?!” Except all the other kids were running to their moms with outstretched arms and sunny grins. I was in this by myself.

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