These two.
Right now, they are best friends … and perfect enemies.
They play beautifully, pretending to be an owner looking for a lost puppy, or a baker bringing cakes to a favorite customer. When she wakes up, he is the first person she goes looking for (after Daddy, of course). When she is upstairs napping, he asks constantly when she’ll be back down, ready to be Bonnie to his Clyde. It is blissful, and beautiful and sweet and all the things that make Mommas and Daddies all at once proud and in love with parenting.
And then it blows up.
She is bossy and loud and unbending.
He is willful and defiant and unimpressed with her delusions of grandeur.
She shrieks and says he is trying to play the girl role in the game, or take the only pink colored pencil.
He shoves her aside or dangles the toy she wants just inches from her face before yanking it away and shoving it deep into his pocket.
And we sigh.
We sigh because we have been here before, with other children. Siblings who were like magnets: when the right ends aligned, nothing could pull them apart. But when the opposite poles were facing, the forces exerted couldn’t be manipulated to even allow them to touch. We’ve seen this, been here, wrote the book. And those kids turned out fine.
Our older kids are close. They get along. They count one another among their closest friends.
So we’ll soldier on. We’ll wade through the murky waters of “He’s touching me!” and “She said no!” We’ll guide and correct and exhort and soothe. We’ll consult our memory banks for the tips and tricks that make the season as comfortable for all involved, and we’ll find our way out.
And we’ll keep taking notes. Because there’s another little man coming up fast right behind these two, and unless a miracle happens somewhere along the line, he’ll find someone in the family to call his frenemy, too.
Thank you. Two of my four read like what you just described. It’s exhausting sometimes.
Thank you for writing this. My oldest two are definitely frenemies and it drives me nutty. I reassure myself with the thought that they have the fren part. My sister and I were just enemies.
You are most certainly not alone! As tiring as it is, it almost seems to be necessary between some personalities. Drawing lines and all that. ((sigh))