“No, Mommy” was my oldest daughter’s first sentence. I posted the news on my Facebook page and got many “LOLs” “love it’s,” “like it’s,” etc. The milestone resonated with my friends in cyberspace, as they knew first-hand that I would hear this sentence repeatedly in my adult life, or at least for the next two decades.
My father jokes that Siena is a little-me, that I still say “No, Dad!” “No, Mom!” and that I am only getting a pay-back for the years of stubbornness with my own parents. He pretends to be me at age five, squinting his eyes and tightening his fist, “No, I’m not going!” he demands. Then he smiles. “Ahhh, the memories,” he says.
Is this a rite-of-passage that all parents must go through?
I remember working with students who dropped out or were expelled from school. Herbert Kohl’s book “I Won’t Learn From You” & Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment got me through that first year, as it offered me a lens through which to see that many of my students were refusing to learn – not that they couldn’t learn. These kids were merely trying to maintain some semblance of dignity amidst teachers and curricula that these students saw as coercive, seducing them into something or someone who they did not (yet) think that they were.
Siena started saying “No, Mommy” when she was one years-old. Wrapped into that first sentence was so much! Her willfulness. My boundary setting. Our communication with one another. At that time, she only had a handful of words that she could express verbally. Now, she has a plethora of words from which to share her thoughts and feelings. But she still keeps saying that darn sentence – or “command” for the grammarians out there. “No Mommy!”
Strangely enough, I’m not sure I want it to end.
