What’s Gotta Go

One sister for sale!
One sister for sale!
One crying and spying young sister for sale!
I’m really not kidding,
So who’ll start the bidding?
Do I hear a dollar?
A nickel?
A penny?
Oh, isn’t there, isn’t there, isn’t there any
One kid who will buy this old sister for sale,
This crying and spying young sister for sale?

Part of “Sister For Sale” from Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstien

Who here is a fan of Shel Silverstein? Where The Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic were both read to me as a child and I loved the hilarious poems. They are perfect for a kid, and good enough for adults to laugh at as well. A couple of Christmases a go we gave them to our avid reading son, and he has enjoyed them as well.

This, of course, is one of his favorite poems seeing that he now has two little sisters. He can keep the baby, but the 5 year old little sister he thinks perfectly applies to this poem.

Little did I know that one of the poems would fit how I am feeling about one of my sons.

As I mentioned in a previous post, he has hit one of those phases in a child’s life that every parent dreads. He is irrational, losing his temper constantly about the smallest things and generally speaking putting us at wits end. Bottom line, in our little parental attempts at psychological analysis, we think he is in a power struggle phase. He is turning eight next month, and we think for some reason he is now trying to establish some dominance in the house. Part of why we think this is that he does his little traveling show more with my wife than with me. He is a big kid, so the physical intimidation has long since worn off. Not that we overuse physical discipline, but the idea of a spanking carries little concern with him.

Is this what they call the joy of parenting? I think I missed that chapter in the owners manual. I can only hope we can handle all this the right way and he will get through it as a phase. I can’t even imagine right now what the teenage years are going to be like with this one. He is hard headed and stubborn, which unfortunately he comes by honestly.

So I say again, “Do I hear a dollar, a nickel, a penny?”

Ok, seriously I love my kids. There are times I could throw them out to live in the playhouse in the backyard and be just fine with it. Sure, I’d let them in to eat meals, that’d only be reasonable of course. Do you think I would be that cruel? Ahh, I can just imagine the peace and quiet now.