I was sitting next to Norah, my 6-year-old. We were on the sofa watching A Dolphin Tale, when I said, jokingly, “We are thinking about getting a pet dolphin.”
Norah looked up at me, eyes big and excited, and before she spoke, I knew I’d made a really bad decision. We often play a game, Norah and I, where I suggest crazy, outlandish pets that I’m planning to get, and then we imagine what it would be like.
“I’m thinking of getting you a pet baby dragon,” I might say, or “Let’s run down to the dinosaur store and pick up a baby triceratops.” Then we chat about what we will name it or where we will keep it or what we will feed it. It’s all fun and games, but apparently, in Norah’s mind, getting a dolphin was, in fact, a possibility.
Her mouth was open for some time before she said, “We can name it Cute Nose The Princess!” She was wearing a Sophia The First princess shirt and pink shorts. She squealed.
“Oh, Norah,” I said. “I was just kidding. We can’t get a dolphin.”
Moments earlier we were snuggling. We were having a great time. We were father and daughter. In that one moment, I’d turned into the biggest jerk on the face of the earth. My wife was at the kitchen table, and she looked at me with a furrowed brow and mouthed, “Nice work, moron.”
Norah moved away from me and onto our rocking chair. She curled up into a ball and moaned. Then she said, “I just want a cute baby dolphin.”
She said it like it was such a simple thing, an easy request, same as getting candy at the store, and the fact that I wouldn’t get it for her made me a jerk. I suppose I was a jerk for getting her hopes up.
My wife, being the amazing person that she is, tried to help me reason with her. “Listen, Norah. We can’t get a dolphin. Where would we keep it?”
The sad thing is, the moment you try to reason with a 6-year-old, you’ve already lost.
Norah looked up from the chair, thought for a moment, and then said, “In the bath tub.” She raised her eyebrows, and I realized just how young she was. At 6, really anything is possible, and for a moment I wished to be 6 again.
We continued to try to reason with her, saying that a dolphin wouldn’t fit in the tub and that even if it could, I didn’t know if we could house-train it.
I told her that it wouldn’t fit in the kid pool in the backyard, and that dolphins were really expensive and hard to transport. Nothing worked. As we spoke, I really felt like I wanted to redeem myself, but I didn’t know how. I honestly didn’t know if I could.
Little kids are so complicated. They don’t respond well to logic or reason, and sometimes saying the stupidest thing can send them into a spiral of emotion. I suggested that we get her a toy dolphin, but that wasn’t good enough.
Finally, Norah said, “The only thing that will make me happy is a dolphin or a baby deer.”
My wife smiled, and I put my face in my hands.
“What would we do with a baby deer once it grows up?”
Norah was sitting up in the chair now. She smiled, her face seemed to say, I’ve thought about this before. “Once it gets big, we will put it on a leash. Then we will walk it out into the forest and let it go!”
She opened her arms in a loving gesture, and in her eyes I could see the little deer prancing off into a wonderfully green world.
We chatted about the impossibility of having a pet deer for a while. Eventually, she settled into an angry pout and stopped talking. The conversation drifted off, and we all had dinner. Most of the evening, though, it was clear that Norah felt wronged by me.
Just before bed I crouched next to her. She was in a princess nightgown, her hair freshly combed.
“Norah,” I said, “ I’m really sorry that I lied to you about getting a dolphin.” It wasn’t until the words left my mouth that I realized I had, indeed, lied to my little girl. Sure, my intentions were just to have fun. I was joking around. But obviously getting a pet dolphin was serious business to my little girl, and I needed to recognize that.
“You have to understand that we just can’t get a dolphin. Or a baby deer. But here’s what I can do. I can give you a handful of chocolate chips, and I can give you an apology. Can you forgive me?
Norah smiled. Then she gave me a hug and said, “Yup!” Then she put her hands out. I went to the pantry, grabbed her treat, and gave it to her.
She smiled, and I thought, “Perhaps this parenting thing isn’t so hard after all.”
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