Being Belligerent

Spud is obsessed with doors – any doors – and it is driving.me.up.the.wall.

If the door is opened, she closes it. And if it is closed, she opens it and then closes it again. And if she is from the inside, she’ll be locking and unlocking it every 10 seconds while opening and closing it.

The door knob covers we bought worked to a certain extent, but she has also figured out that if she turns the damn thing rigorous enough, the covers would break into two and she can get to the door knob. They say sometimes kids do that to get attention, and so, when it boils down to that, we should just ignore it and not react. Ignoring her doesn’t help and I’ll tell you why - try listening to the sound of doors opening and slamming shut for like 100 times in 3 minutes and tell me that you can ignore it without worrying that your kid’s fingers will not get caught in between the hinges!

I don’t know what it is with her and doors. One time, Silver Bullet discovered that she had apparently locked our Master Bedroom door from the inside. And guess where the keys to the rest of the doors in the house are kept? Yes, in the Master Bedroom, of course.  And at another time, she had locked the door behind her with Squirt inside.

Use a foam door stopper at the hinges? Doesn’t work! If anything, Spud thought that the resistance she got from the stopper is much more fun in trying to close and open the door. Days like that, I do feel like ripping off all the doors in our home just so that the closing and opening would stop.

Being the spirited child that she is, Spud managed to piss the hell out of her father after swimming class the other day. She had refused to leave the shower after Silver Bullet had clean her up. And when Silver Bullet stepped out of the shower, past the door, she did not follow like she always does (usually after a lot of telling her nicely which progressed to stern warnings)– instead, she closed the cubicle door after Silver Bullet and locked it from the inside with her in it. She refused to open it, and Silver Bullet had to improvise by using a coin to unlatch the door from the outside.

OK. I was guilty of laughing my ass off when he related to me what happened, and, from a 3^rd person point of view, you gotta admit that the story was quite funny! Obviously Silver Bullet didn’t think so…Ooops! Especially because the floor of the shower cubicle is slippery, with sharp edges and that if Spud had unknowingly turned the shower tap to red instead of blue (and I so could see her do it!), she’d be scalded by extremely hot water coming out of the shower head! It is so easy to laugh at it, but, honestly, had that been ME on the other side of the door, I wouldn’t be laughing my ass off, either. I would be livid, too.

Spud is Spud at her belligerent best. But as they all say, this is just a phase.