River utterly broke me today. She made me yell. She made me cry. She made me go online and put a desperate plea out to my friends on Facebook. And then yell some more.

How is it that this four year old can break me so easily? Her insolence is unbelievable. When I tell her to stop picking up her sister, she looks at me, smirks and does it again, never taking her eyes off my face. When I threaten to take away TV the night, and she looks at me with a smile and casually replies “you’ll forget”. When I pick her up to carry her to her room for a time out, she laughs the whole way. The whole thing is a game to her, and I’m losing. It’s only when I put her in her room and close the door that she gets upset – but often more angry-upset than apologetic-upset.

I have no idea what to do.

Believe me, yelling is the last thing that I want to do. And I really do try. When River misbehaves, I tell her calmly to stop again and again, laying out consequences, giving her chances to comply, but she just laughs in my face.

At one point today, right in the middle of a total meltdown, I had a random thought – how would a better mom respond right now, at this very instant? And I actually had no idea.

How would a really great mom deal with my child. Not their own child, who may respond to their time-ins or reasonable requests, but my child, who would be laughing at them, daring them to follow through on a punishment?

I had time to think about it later in the afternoon when I dropped River off for her art class (or as I like to think of it: mommy’s break time). I took Harbour up to Chapters to enjoy an hour of peace – all I can say is thank goodness for coffee and gift cards. I indulged in a mocha and splurged on some fantastically crafty magazines. Apart from Harbour’s determination to stash stolen pieces of chalk in my purse (hmmmm… red flag?), the hour passed uneventfully and gave me a chance to cool down and really think more about how this supposedly better mother would handle our issues.

I think this better mom would stay calm. She wouldn’t cry or yell. She would give River clear consequences for her behaviour and then follow through quickly and consistently. And she would do it again and again and again without losing her patience. This better mom actually began to get on my nerves a bit. Really, she never loses her temper? Ever? I don’t believe it. But I digress.

In addition to keeping her cool, a better mom would also set River up to win instead of fail as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t blame myself for her bad behaviour, but I do believe that a lot of meltdowns could be avoided if I paid more attention to River’s triggers. If she hasn’t slept well, it may mean that we don’t run a lot of errands that day. If people are coming over, I need to give her lots of time to process that information and prepare herself. If she is climbing up the walls, I need to work a trip to the park into the schedule so she can work out her energy on the slides instead of on her sister. The better mom might have had a much better day by simply spending 30 minutes pushing River on the swings.

Finally, this imaginary better mom would probably tell me that I’m doing fine and not to be so hard on myself. And she would say that this too shall pass. (Actually, it sounds like this better mom could be one of my Facebook friends.)

But for better or for worse, my daughter is stuck with me. I hope that tomorrow is easier. At least it’s night now and soon she’ll be asleep (I hope). I think we’ll read some extra stories tonight and have some extra cuddles. After today, I think we both need them.