To Believe or Not To Believe?

“Mom, why don’t you ever believe in me?!”

I stood motionless, holding my 16 month old daughter while staring at my almost 5 year old daughter, mouth agape.  I couldn’t think of a single way to respond, because I had an entire lecture series of parenting articles, blog posts, and advice warring with a simple fact in my brain.  It went a little something like this:    

If I don’t believe in her now, if I don’t trust her to make her own mistakes and learn her own lessons (when safe) then she will never learn to believe in and trust herself.  If I always run in and fix the zipper or put the lunch in the backpack or set up the train set because it is taking too long, it is too hard, we are too late, then what?  I will make her insecure.  I will make her doubt herself.  I will make her dependent on her father and me and then friends and then boyfriends and then somebody else but never herself.

I will fail her.

I am failing her already!  She thinks I don’t believe in her!

How could I not believe this face?

But…but….her tennis shoes are not in her backpack!!!  Because they are on the floor in the pantry.  Where I can see them.  Right.  Now.  So I literally CANNOT believe in her.  Because she is just wrong!

<insert silent, primal, maternal scream of despair here>

So there I stood, mouth agape, paralyzed by this parenting crisis.  Do I just lay it out logically?

“Lucy, sweetheart, my strong, smart, brave darling.  I am so sorry that you feel that I do not believe in you.  However, the fact remains that I can see your tennis shoes on the floor in the pantry right now.  Ergo, if they are on the floor of the pantry, they cannot be in your backpack, as they cannot occupy two separate spaces at the same time.  Correct?”

Or do I just let it go (HAH!  Sing it all day now!) and allow her to make the inevitable discovery when she gets to school, and wear her snow boots in class all day?

“Lucy, sweetheart, my strong, smart, brave darling.  I am so sorry that you feel that I do not believe in you.  If you think that your shoes are already in your backpack, then I trust you.  You have an excellent memory, as I have often said.  Let’s just get your backpack and get to the car, ok?”

Well, as it happens, both of my imagined scenarios were off.  Here is how it played out.

Such innocence?

<Lucy enters the dining room walking toward the garage door, head thrown back, groaning in agony.  She has her backpack on, and is carrying her school folder, which I have asked her approximately 83 times to place in her backpack this morning.>

L: Ugghhhh…this backpack is SO heavy!

Me: I can see that it looks quite full.  What do you have in there?

L: I don’t knooooooow.  I didn’t look.  

M: Can you take it off so we can put your folder inside?

L: Fine.

M: <I open the backpack.  Inside are Lucy’s rain boots, which she wore to school yesterday instead of her snow boots>  I see that your rain boots are in your backpack Lucy.  Do you want to take these to wear at school today?  Or would you rather get some other shoes to take?

L: <laughs> Oh yeah!  I forgot I put those in there and wore my tennis shoes home yesterday!  I want other shoes.

M: <silently closing my eyes in victory, which is usually the same thing as defeat when it comes to these parenting moments> OK.

What would you have done?