My oldest daughter just turned six in September and I have set out on a quest to teach her how to disagree. She has flaming red hair that is streaked with beautiful dashes of gold and has the fiery personality to match. She is my sunshine.
My oldest daughter is very different from my youngest. My youngest is a lot like her daddy, if you disagree with her it doesn’t matter, she will shrug you off because she knows that she is right anyway. My oldest doesn’t handle disagreements very well. Yet.
If you disagree with her she will take it personal. She has a tendency to get incredibly angry and will even lash out with emotion with a move that I refer to as ‘insta-cry.’ Over the past few months this has become something of a habit and a while back I decided it was time to teach her how to properly disagree.
Every year in the city that we live there is a festival at the end of summer. My two children are from a previous marriage and my lovely wife and I have the ladies three days a week. On our day to get them they had been to this festival and my oldest daughter, the Cloey Monster, arrived with a purple feather attached to her hair. I am no feather aficionado but this was one that they attach to your hair that no normal daddy can remove without holding down his child and shaving her bald. Nevertheless I trusted my lovely wife who told me that the feather would eventually come out on its own.
Hearing this bold proclamation the Cloey Monster was not happy. “This fedder will stay in my hair forever,” she says.
“Baby, I don’t think it will stay in there forever,” I say.
Insta-cry on cue, “Yes it will! The lady told me it would! I swear!”
I say, “Calm down, I’m not saying she didn’t tell you that, but what I am saying is that I don’t think that fedder will stay in your head forever.”
“It will!”
“It won’t.”
“Yes it will!”
“No,” I wipe tears from her face, “It won’t. Why are you so upset?”
“You just don’t udderstand,” she says in her most adult dramatic fashion.
“Oh,” I retort in my most adult childish fashion, “I understand. The feather won’t last forever.”
Insta-cry, “It will. You just don’t udderstand the issue.”
“I understand the issue. The feather will not stay in your hair forever.”
“I’m telling you it will!”
“I’m telling you it won’t.”
We went around this carousel for at least ten minutes. She claiming that her ‘fedder’ would last, me stating it wouldn’t. We disagreed.
To better help her understand that it is okay to disagree I talked calmly to her and asked the Cloey Monster to stop crying and when she was calm I stated my case. She again, stated hers and I said, “Okay, then we disagree. This is not a bad thing.”
I told her people are going to disagree with you every day.
You are not always going to be right and often you will find yourself debating what your opinion is and see that people are going to have different opinions. This is not a bad thing. You don’t have to be angry because people disagree with you or don’t think the same way you do. You think the way you do because you’re unique. That means you’re special. Don’t be angry because people don’t feel or think the same way you do.
She and I made a bet.
I proposed that in the spirit of learning how to disagree and taking responsibility for when we are wrong that we come to an agreement. She said that her purple fedder would stay in her hair forever. I said that her purple fedder would not. The agreement was that IF that fedder did last forever I would come to her, groveling, reach out for her hand and beg forgiveness all the while telling her how right she was and how wrong I was, which I performed for her so she can see how awesome it would be to prove her daddy wrong.
BUT, if at any point in time her purple fedder proved to not stay in her hair forever she had to come to me smiling and tell me she was wrong and her handsome father was right and that she loved me.
“Sunshine, is there still a purple fedder in your hair?” I say four days (that felt like a year) later the next time I seen her.
“NO,” she said. “But it would still be if I had wanted it to.”
I pause for a second taking this statement in. She is smiling in her car seat waiting for me to respond. I turn around slowly to face this smiling angel who is trying not to laugh.
“You know,” I say. “I don’t think I agree with that.”
“Well,” my sunshine says, shining bright, “I guess that means we disagree.”
Touché, my lady. Touché.
“I love you, handsome,” She says.
“I love you, sunshine.”