‘Sam do you know what I’m going to do now?’ I am looking at the living room floor, except that I’m not because I can’t see it, covered as it is with dressing up clothes. Strewn across the floor. I start picking them up in arm fills and stuffing them back into the dressing up box. Actions speak louder than words.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You tidy up. In the meantime I’ll put the Rapunzel dress on and I’ll be ready to play the game. And you won’t be.’
In the meantime? Where did she get that from? She is six.
‘That, Sam, is a sacrifice I am willing to make. And anyway, you can get your dress on as fast as you like, but at the moment there is nowhere to play your game because there is nowhere to stand, walk or sit in this room. And why?’
I am about to continue but she jumps in. ‘Because I pulled all the clothes out of the dressing up box and threw them on the floor.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But I had to do that because you put them all in the box!’
‘Yes, that’s right, I – me, I – tidied up by putting them all in the box,’
‘But I can’t find the dress I want if all the dressing up clothes are all stuffed in the box.’
I stand up straight – slowly because I have aged several decades in the five years since becoming a mum and my back aches – and look at her.
‘And that means,’ she continues, ‘I can’t get ready very quickly to play the game. And you are always telling me to hurry up. Especially when I ask you to play dress up with me – you say ‘OK, a quick game, come on, chop chop.’ But I can’t chop chop because you put all the clothes in the box. So it’s your fault.’
I guess I haven’t been very smart in concealing my utter hatred of Princess dress up games. But how did this all become my bad?
‘Well,’ I say in my most grown-up voice, planning to regain some ground, ‘it is still the case that no one can play any game in this room because there is nowhere to stand or walk.’
‘I’m not going to play in this room. I’m going upstairs. And you’re not playing.’
‘Fine,’ I say, defeated.
She stomps out of the room. Then walks back in. ‘Mum, can you help me put my dress on?’
I do.
Triple Trouble Tribe 