Just because she's little, doesn't mean she isn't a person

Lately, I have been a shitty parent.
I'm sure I make my kids' lives miserable on several occasions throughout the day.
I've been falling into bad parenting habits, the worst of which is creating power struggles with Indi by trying to 'put it over' her. There are really no excuses. I can say i'm tired, I can say that I'm overloaded because Craig's gone 5 days at a time, I can make a million stupid excuses, but deep down I know that I know better, and this is certainly not the person I want to be, and certainly not the parent I want to be. I know that fighting and screaming at each other acheives nothing. I know that deep down.

But unfortunately, deep down is not where I go searching when I've asked her to do something about 80 billion times and she seems to be ignoring me.
If I did stop and think rationally, I would realise that she is not ignoring me. She can hear me just fine. She just has more important things happening at the moment. I would see that this is a very familiar situation. The only difference is that I'm usually the one 'ignoring' and she is the one asking me to do something. Except when it's me, I don't call it ignoring. I'm doing something that is important to me, and I want her to accept that, and trust that I will give her my full attention when I'm finished whatever task it is. I expect her to wait patiently until I'm finished.

So why the hell do I think that she should to jump to attention when I demand something?
Because I am an idiot! She is like a little mirror of me ... and most of the time, the reflection is not what I want to see. So here I make a conscious decision to return to my respectful parenting ways;
To respect her as a strong minded, beautiful, unique individual capable of kindness, love, respect, and courtesy, not expect things from her that I wouldn't expect from myself, and not repress her ability to know what is important and meaningful to her.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo