You’re not the boss of me

A short post about a five-year-old girl who wants to be her own boss from now on – in a week of transcripts, here’s one of our conversation last night:

C: Mum, I’ve had enough of you telling me what to do. From now on I’m going to decide everything myself.

Me: What would you do differently if you were able to do whatever you want?

C: Well, I’d watch TV as much as I want.

Me: How much TV?

C: Twenty programs a day.

Me: Wow, that’s a lot. What would you give up, to make time for that – would you give up school, or drawing or playing?

C: (thinks for a second) I mean twenty minutes TV a day

Me: OK that sounds fine (she currently gets 45 minutes), what else would you do differently?

C: I’d have lunch whenever I want, maybe 9 o’clock

Me: 9 o’clock in the  morning? Instead of breakfast?

C: No I mean 9 o’clock in the afternoon

Me: There’s no 9 o’clock in the afternoon, only in the morning and at night..

C: OK then, I’d have lunch at 12 o’clock in the afternoon.

Me: That sounds good, what else would you do?

C: I’d go to bed whenever I want, like 5 o’clock

Me: At tea-time?

C: Well, I’d have tea-early and then go to bed

(If only)

And that was that. I could over-think this and wonder about conformism and why we fall into habits and routines and why we all follow similar schedules in our daily lives.
And whether in the end the reason we all follow roughly the same patterns is because it’s arguably the most practical way to run our day-to-day lives, as discovered by my five-year-old last night.
Or on a simpler level, maybe we all just need to feel we have some self-determination in our lives- she was certainly happier after making the major changes above 🙂

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2 thoughts on “You’re not the boss of me”

    1. well now, I thought she was quite sensible too. But the next day, I noticed something sparkly on her eyelids – it was lipstick. I asked her why, and she said “mum, I told you I’m now doing whatever I want, and I want to wear lipstick on my eyes”

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