Accidents

My daughter is just a kid. I know it’s obvious and sounds kind of stupid written down. It’s not always obvious to me though.

Kids have a lot of accidents. Ergo, so does my daughter. Spilt milk. Spilt food. Toys stuck under the sofa. Trinkets stuck between two sliding doors. Elbows unintentionally hitting noses. Feet accidently stepping on feet. My guess is, she averages one per day. I told her she averages two a week, and she thought I was inflating the number.

I sometimes (maybe I’m being kind to myself a bit) give her a hard time when she does have an accident. I look down using my height advantage, and give her a condescending look.  I say something on the lines of ‘accident again huh?’.

Usually she has this sheepish, apologetic look, and nothing else is said.

However today her true feelings came out. She’s been thinking about this during the course of the day. “You know accidents happen”, she says. If I’m doing something bad on purpose, then you can blame me. A few hours later she reminds me how I once bumped her head 6 years ago. A story that she’s been told, not one she remembers. “You can have accidents too”, she says.

The final straw is in the evening when we’re listening to music. The song playing is “Thinking out loud” by Ed Sheeren. She catches on these lines, “I'll just keep on making the same mistakes. Hoping that you'll understand“. “See!”, she squeals. “Even he’s saying the same thing.”

I get it honey. I’ll go easy on you from now kid.