A Case in Study - Mango Reloaded.

Little Miss Mango has a default setting –

it is called NO.

I'm not quite sure where she learnt it, or why she found it to be such an irresistible word, but there you have it. Bath time! 'NO!' Time to get out of the bath! “NO!” Come and have dinner! “NO!” All right don't have dinner! “NO!” Do you want me to help you? “NO!” All right, you do it. “NO!” Okay, so it's not really that much different than any other kid at one stage or another in their lives. But even open questions like, "What did you do today?", "Who would you like to read to you tonight?", even "I wonder where my keys are?" all can get that same answer in the negative. That's why I think it's her default – it's just something she says, like 'hmmm' or 'right' – to give her a couple of minutes to think of a better answer. Maybe she really doesn't like anything. Maybe we give her too many options. Or maybe she throws us this curve ball so she can think of another way to get her little finger ready for attack.

Because if it's something she's good at, it's manipulating us.

She knows when to put the tears on – you know those great situations like when Mrs Mango is walking her, with 3 in the pram and 1 dawdling along beside on the way home from school, like a cattle dog rounding them safely into the paddock but with more biting involved; when her mum actually doesn't have the physical capacity to respond to her ludicrous requests. And sure you may say that as a parent you shouldn't really respond to her when she's acting this way – what else can you do? It's not safe to leave her where she is sprawled out on the poor excuse for a footpath that the Gold Coast Council provides (meanwhile they charge people for parking on it, despite it looking a lot more like grass rather than footpath, but that's another story) because, obviously, people are driving on it. You can't smack her (despite the acceptability of that behaviour by some of the other parents at the school who slap their kids across the back of the head when they first come out of class in preparation for something they might do in the future sometime – when they finally do whatever it is that they were slapped for, their parental figure takes time out from watching Judge Judy to shriek at them, 'That's why I slapped you!' ) because you actually don't have the hands. Not that it would do anything anyway – as I think I've stated in the past, Little Miss Mango feeds off human anger, so you'd just be making her stronger. You just have to put your dignity aside for a second, bite the bullet and accept the judgements cast at you like they were thrown by hungry fisherman. You just pick her up in a rough and tumble way, storm off and act angry at her the whole way home.
She also definitely knows when to do the exact opposite, in the sweetest, cutest way to come running in, full of smiles and hugs and the most girlish girls voice she can muster. Pretty much any time I'm in the room - you know what I'm saying any other fathers reading this, don't you? You could all try and pretend that you don't spoil your daughters rotten, that you're as tough on them as you were or are with your boys, but there's nothing to be said for it. If you have a daughter, planned to have one, and now love her like a daughter, she will always hold power over you. Really, we're just making it harder for future men everywhere by letting this go on because once girls understand this power, they will use it against us for the rest of their lives. It's the power to break one's heart with a look; the power to gain one's loyalty; the power to make you believe something you didn't think a moment ago, and most importantly in the case of young girls, the power to seperate the parental resolve. And it only has to happen once, even if it's by accident – where she has asked her mother for something and gotten a negative, and then asked me for the same thing without me knowing, and I've given in – BOOM!, it's all over. And once it's broken, it's almost irreparable. Next time she wants something, she'll know how to play the situation a bit better. She'll just come up to me with that cutesy face and ask in her sweetest voice, with every politeness she can muster, to have sherbet ice-cream for dinner, or “nutatella” for breakfast(honestly, what are you supposed to say to that?!!), and I'll be broken. It's even worse when they learn to say 'I love you.' It splits you right down the middle and walks over the top of your broken and bleeding pieces. With your heart melting around your feet, you look straight at your wife, begging her to save you from this fate, to give you some way to fight this despicable evil, but she shoots back a 'you're on your own there buddy.' Because no matter what, the first rule of female code is – you don't talk about the female code. So every night she says she's going to dream about mummy and daddy, of which she confirms in the morning; she catches my air kisses at bed time and gives the best hug on earth – all she asks for is me to every now and then look the other way when she's pushing her brother off the lounge – I mean, how are you supposed to fight that? For god's sake, one night when I was reading her a story, she held my face which was a couple of days unshaven and said 'I like your beard.' I said, 'Do you want me to grow a beard?' To which she nodded - I haven't shaved it since, and it's been months. Plus, I didn't even want a beard. Now I can't get rid of the damn thing.

And it's not a good thing she knows how to do this so early because the other part of her personality is that she is bossy, and a grumpy boss at that, without the ability to stop the course she's on and turn back or admit to a mistake. If she says something is so, then it is so – no matter what – everything else can just be denied. She'd make a great political leader – she would never make a mistake, and if she did, she'd just deny it until the opposition were too tired to ask anymore. And this wasn't something she developed either - it seemed to be something that was in her genes, because we've never let her get away with it, and seem to be always fighting it. Some people may disagree with me, that we have let her become like this, that we're easy on her but there's a difference between giving in to her, and choosing your battles wisely. It's something we've learnt at other times in our life - it's important to understand when to respond, and when not to. A negeative response is still a response, it is still attention, and for someone seeking attention it is paydirt. We've chosen the slow burn answer, the hard work answer - we don't want to be fighting our entire lives but for the moment we're going to have to contend with the battles.

Besides, I think I've nearly got her worked out anyway. The trick is, and it was such a simple, common sense idea that I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier – you just never ask her a question. If you don't ask, she can't answer, and if she can't answer she can't say no. If you're putting her to bed, don't ask her to go to bed – just take her to bed - “Oops, we're already here, what can we do?” If you have to ask her a question, make it multiple choice, and act as if these are the only two choices that could possibly ever be made, but make the answer ridiculously obvious. Like when you've taken her off to bed, say, “Do you want a story tonight, or should I just leave?" It's like asking somebody, “Would you like to have dinner, or would you rather a toothpick in your eye?” The answer is so obvious that it doesn't need to be said. But when she says “No!” (and we've already covered that she will), then leave. She'll stop you before you've turned (albeit with another “No!” but this was the one you were really after). This solves a fair few problems with her, although it is painstaking (but anyone that thinks behaviour management is the easiest part of being a parent is a moron) and for the rest there are two pretty good responses. Ignore her, or put her somewhere where no-one can pay attention to her. A tantrum is worthless if the only one witnessing it is a fluffy teddy missing an eye (for god's sake he hasn't even got depth perception) and half a lego man. As I said, this is the slow-burn answer. If you want to try hitting her, despite having to get past those big brown sad eyes staring into your soul and ripping your intestines out through your nostrils, you'd have to come to terms with the fact that eventually she will have gained so much power off your negative energy she will be stalking through large cities, terrorising and devouring citizens like popcorn, and exploding buildings with her fiery breath and laser eyes. And when they have to resort to getting Mothra out to stop her, just remember that was all your own doing and it wasn't a giant moth, but laziness killed the beast (I hope she never reads the bit where I called her beast – that's not very good for self-esteem).

So we'll just keep plodding on, hacking away the unseemly bits with a finely tuned chainsaw, in the hope (that every parent has with their two-year-old) that we can turn our feral wild duckling into some sort of beautiful swan, or pleasant goose, or hell just a reasonably well-behaved adult duck will be fine. And that's all a parent can really hope for, isn't it?