Control

Our four-year-old daughter has really begun to display her stubborn streak. We hope it's temporary and not a fundamental part of her nature, but currently all signs indicate we've got one defiant little blonde goblin on our hands.

She decides what she wants (according to some arcane logic, perhaps involving wind speeds, moon phases and I think she might have a d20 hidden somewhere) and fights for it, despite all rationality, tooth and nail.

Tooth: it took an epic struggle involving at least four round trips and several nightmares' worth of banshee-grade screams to finally convince her to permit a dentist a look inside her mouth. He discovered four cavities that probably partially result from the fact that that inner oral sanctum was a longtime No Toothbrushing Zone for us as well.

Nail: she slashed her finger on her friend's door. After the trauma and melodrama of the stitches (the noise of which I'm sure requires no description) the wound healed and then the real war began. Any suggestion that it might be time to remove the decrepit bandage covering the stitches, let alone the stitches themselves, was met with a kind of furious contempt reminiscent of caged starving dogs. We ended up conducting two midnight stealth campaigns and finally succeeded at the delicate labor of cutting the stitches out while she slept.

The dentist surmised that she seems to be motivated by extreme distaste for feeling like she's not in control. Even an irrational choice that works to her detriment but puts her back in control may often seem the better option to her. It shouldn't be surprising that she's this way; if this kind of predisposition is transmissible by gene then I'm surely the source.

My company holds a campaign every October to get employees to contribute to United Way (with one of their incentives being a very impressive contribution match). I'd been planning on contributing, but when a coworker all but crowned himself Charity Czar and made the rounds informing us that he wanted 100% people contributing from the department, I bristled and almost didn't contribute, purely out of rage at being pressured into it.

I guess it's true that I too hate being pressured or forced into circumstances, even when they are clearly ones that I should accept. Luckily for our little imp of a girl, it appears this tendency can be overcome; eventually I decided that my indignation did no good for the needy people who could have used my dollars instead, and I sent them along.

But I won't claim I wasn't pleased to learn that, even with my contribution, he still didn't meet his extortionary goal of universal compliance.