It might be just me, but sometimes my children behave irrationally.

When this happens, my first instinct — usually indulged — is to return the child in question to whatever passes for “normal” behavior, as quickly as possible.

My second instinct, increasingly, is to reflect upon whether this irrational behavior might — just possibly — be something that I myself display, albeit in a more “mature” form.

It’s not really news that if you stand back and compare the behavior of children and adults, you’ll probably find more similarities than differences. For all the living and learning that we do, I think we mostly just add protective layers on top of our childlike instincts. We’re kind of like those Russian nesting dolls; we may look all grown up on the outside, but at our deepest core is a tiny little person. A tiny little person full of basic wonder, love, anger, fear, and who often screams, “It’s not fair!”

For instance:

-When each of our daughters started sitting in a high chair and eating solid foods, they did so quite messily. So, at the end of each meal, we would wipe their hands and faces with a wet washcloth to prevent them from looking like human sculptures of mashed sweet potatoes. Remember, now, we did this following every single meal, three meals a day, for at least a year. We applied gentle pressure as we wiped, and the washcloth was pleasingly warm. In a spa setting, you’d pay good money for this kind of service. But every single one of our daughters would SCREAM like we were taking a Brillo pad to them, every single time we wiped them down. Now that it’s Georgia’s turn for the thrice-daily screamfest, I again find myself wondering, “WHY is this such a traumatic surprise to you? Isn’t this the exact same thing I did after your LAST meal? Not to mention EVERY meal?!?”

And yet, don’t we all miss the patterns and react with shock and outrage when we find ourselves repeating the same scenario over and over?

-At least 37 times a day, Campbell comes to me complaining (loudly): “Mommy, Sister won’t give me the doll/toy/marker/book.” I’ve learned that my first question should be, “Well, Campbell, did you ASK her for it?” Because over half the time, the answer is “No.” And once Campbell goes back to Fiona and simply asks for whatever it is she wants, chances are good that she’ll get it. (Or at least, she’ll get it after Fiona’s “done with it,” which often requires persistent requests every few seconds).

And yet, don’t we all angrily assume that something’s being withheld from us, when maybe all we had to do was ask?

-Our two oldest daughters sometimes lose control of themselves, in which case the best solution is for them to have a little “time out” alone in a quiet room where they can cool down. Recently, Fiona has started shouting, “FINE! I’m NEVER coming out!” from behind the door that we’ve just closed on her. As if, all along, this has been her idea; she’s the one in control, AND she’s punishing us. Because, you see, she’s NEVER coming out.

And yet, oh my gosh, don’t we all do this? We get so tangled up in our need to appear in control that we turn things around and punish other people without even realizing that we’re really the ones being punished.

-Finally, FAIRNESS. Ah, fairness! Four-year-old Fiona has just latched on to the concept of fair/unfair, so we’re all living with the refrain of “It’s NOT FAIR!” these days.

She says the words, because she’s four, but don’t adults — all of us — still feel it so painfully in our hearts? It’s NOT fair that other people live in Manhattan townhouses, that some people’s children sleep until 9 AM, that Erick gets to leave the house all day. WAAAAAH!

Of course, the appropriate response, to both Fiona and myself, is: “Life’s not fair.” That’s certainly true, but it’s trite and hopeless and a bit too Archie Bunker-ish for me.

So I’ve come up with my own little saying for our whole family:  Never expect fairness for yourself; never accept unfairness for others. This is how I express my desire to quit whining about my own circumstances, and to start thinking instead about how I could help people who REALLY live in unfairness.

Here’s an example of this in action:

Two weeks ago, Fiona raised the “It’s NOT FAIR!” cry in the car, because (I’m not kidding) Campbell had frost on her window, while there were only “boring” water droplets on Fiona’s window. Armed with my nifty new slogan, I said: “At some point, Fiona, you will have frost on your window, so this is not really a question of fairness. But you know what’s not fair? Some children don’t have parents. Some children don’t have three meals a day. Some children don’t have nice soft beds to sleep in and roomfuls of toys to play with. Life ISN’T fair, but in the scheme of things, kiddo, you’re on the blessed side of the fairness seesaw. So, what are you going to do about it? Never expect fairness for yourself, but never accept unfairness for others!”

She hasn’t claimed unfairness again this week.

And that, my friends, is why my children will run away from home to become investment bankers.

I never made a conscious list, but if you’d asked me what kind of mom I’d be before I had kids, I would have said:

-My children would play primarily with non-toxic, sustainably harvested wooden toys.

-I would nurse every child until at least age 1.

-Organic fruits and veggies would be part of every meal (after age 1).

-Cloth diapers only!

-My children would not watch videos — or anything on a screen — until at least age 2.

-Disney princesses, Barbies, and any other plastic characters hawked by ginormous toy companies with questionable ethics would NOT be part of our family culture!

Now, to be fair to myself, I did do a few of those things…for the first year of our first child’s life. But somehow, three years later, Barbie has taken over our house.

More accurately: the Disney princesses wore down our resolve, and Barbie was the second line of attack.

It’s still a mystery to me HOW Fiona first became obsessed with the Disney princesses. You may be thinking: “You don’t KNOW? Where were you? Weren’t you watching?!?” All I can say is: Yes, I was watching, but I still don’t know. What I do know is that — despite the fact that I’d never bought her anything Disney, never knowingly exposed her to anything Disney — a few months before Fiona turned 2 it was like a switch flipped on in her brain and suddenly it was ALL about Disney princesses. Almost exactly one year later, the Barbie switch flipped on. As younger sisters, Campbell and Georgia never had a chance of avoiding the obsession.

Of course, nobody really had a chance of avoiding the obsession, and I was naive if I thought that this was something I could control. One mom vs. the combined force of Disney and Mattel: sounds like a pitch for the next Michael Moore documentary (Mike, call me). Maybe, maybe if we never left the house, I could have shielded them from the pervasive marketing of these two companies. Because this is how I think the switches in Fiona’s brain were flipped: all it took was one trip to Target — or, for that matter, the grocery store, where today she noticed Barbie mouthwash. And we don’t even go shopping very often, but the girls can (and do) check out Disney/Barbie books and DVDs from the public library.

It’s a humbling business, this parenting. Could I have fought against the marketing that spurred Fiona’s insatiable desire for anything Disney princess/Barbie? Could I have sat her down and said, “In our house, we don’t play with these things?” Of course I could have.

Did I? No, I did not.

And sometimes, I feel guilty about that decision. But mostly I’m okay with it.

Why? Well, first of all I’m not convinced that Disney princesses and Barbies pose an inherent danger to my children. I’m aware that they’re not the most intellectually enriching toys — although they certainly keep the girls engaged in imaginary play for hours — but it’s not as if these are the only toys or books available in our house. I do recall a big brouhaha over Barbie dolls some years before I had kids; I believe the debate centered around the (valid) accusation that Barbie dolls provided young girls with unhealthy body images and shallow role models. I’m also fairly certain that, if I scratched the surface, I could come up with numerous ethical concerns attached to both Disney and Mattel companies. I could easily look both of these issues up online, but I haven’t, because I know what I’ll find: lots of loud opinions.

You could accuse me of moral laziness, and to some degree you’d be right. Especially when it comes to corporate ethics; I’d like to take ethics into account in everything I do, but frankly, I just don’t have the energy. I’m more than willing to boycott some obviously bad things, and write letters, and so on. But my first priority is to keep a household (mostly) afloat and relatively peaceful.

I’m also trying to equip my children to function in the big bad world out there, not subject them to some experiment in absolute moral purity — in the same way that I’d prefer to allow my kids to have chocolate and learn how to eat it in moderation, rather than ban sweets altogether. As for the morals of the Disney princesses and Barbie themselves: they’re certainly shallow, cliched, and unrealistic looking — plastic, in every sense.  But if a 6-inch plastic toy is what my daughters are ultimately going to choose for their lifelong role model, there’s a lot more wrong in our house than the toys we play with. Furthermore, the stories that go along with these plastic princesses ultimately have to do with the power of love, friendship, and being true to yourself. And that I can work with.

The other reason I haven’t banned the plastic princesses from our lives is because, in the big scheme of things, any gains to be had from booting out Barbie don’t seem worth the ensuing battle. If my preschoolers love a certain toy (and they DO), and I don’t believe it’ll ruin their characters for life (and I don’t), then it’s not worth the fight. Some things are worth the fight, like sharing and washing your hands and keeping your underwear pulled up, and sometimes I feel like I’m fighting all day long. But who was it that said: “Tyranny breeds resentment”? (Just Googled it: turns out it was me, and a handful of online gamers. But nobody suitably quotable). I think that my kids will be more likely to respect my position in the bigger fights later on if they know that I’m selective but serious, rather than if they perceive me as wantonly denying them anything fun. You may ask: “But aren’t you worried that you’ve already lost control, and that they’ll be smoking crack outside the A & W at age 16 because you let them play with Barbies?” Absolutely. I’m worried about a lot of things, but only time will tell.

Here’s what I can control: the attitudes I model to my girls about Disney princesses and Barbies. So I don’t go overboard with enthusiasm when it comes to these toys. During Fiona’s Disney princess mania, I quietly steered her towards Pocahontas and Mulan, and she remarked, with admiration, that they were the “strongest” princesses. I have personally bought them almost nothing related to Disney princesses or Barbies; they have one tub of my old Barbies (Doesn’t recycling offset the ethical concerns?), and their grandparents supply the rest (and if parenting’s taught me anything about grace, it’s that you don’t muzzle the grandparents!). Never once have I said, “Hey, let’s play princesses/Barbies!”

But Erick and I still feel like Barbie has taken over our house.

POSTSCRIPT: Just so we’re good: I did not write this to justify myself, or, GOD FORBID, to suggest that anybody should go and do likewise. I wrote this because it’s something I’m right in the middle of, something I’m still struggling with. I wrote it to share, because I’m more and more convinced that the best thing we can do for each other as people – aside from babysitting each others’ children – is to share: that it’s hard, that it’s confusing, that we’re not the parents we expected to be, that if we hear the theme to “Barbie’s Fairy Secret” one more time we are going to LOSE IT! So please, feel free to share back. Feel free to completely disagree with me, and pass along any tips on how I can get this stuff out of the house without alienating my children forever!

Our second child is nothing if not confident. I don’t know where she gets it from — certainly not from emulating me. It’s like she was born knowing who she is, and being completely happy with that.

Recent example: Erick took the girls out on Saturday morning and had to cram them all into a small bathroom to change Georgia’s diaper. He set Campbell up on a table where she could see herself in the mirror, thinking that would keep her occupied. Did it ever! According to Erick, Campbell looked at herself in the mirror like she’d never seen herself before, gasped with pleasure, and said, “Daddy, I’m so PRETTY!”

And then this morning I took Campbell and Georgia to Open Gym. Open Gym is a great little thing that Middlebury does during the winter months: they open up the town gym (basically an old high school gymnasium) two mornings a week to preschoolers. There’s a closet filled with mats, hula hoops, basketballs, and toy cars for the kids to play with. It’s as close as you can get to an indoor playground, which is essential when the weather is blah.

Today at Open Gym, Campbell spotted a scooter; not just any scooter, but a PINK BARBIE SCOOTER. It looked kind of like this:

And because she is so confident and determined, and because that scooter was just so PINK and alluring, she hopped right on. Campbell is two years old, a SMALL two years old; the handlebars were about even with her head.  But she grabbed on, and because she’d never scootered before, she started wiggling her butt around to make it move. Obviously, that didn’t work very well, so I tried to teach her how to push off with her foot and then pick it up so she could zoom.

It’s kind of a hard concept to master, but after a couple tries she got it! She’d push with her foot and lift it up just at the right time.

The only problem was that she was moving backwards.

And that, I couldn’t help her with. I was able to teach her how to move, but I couldn’t teach her how to go in the right direction.

But here’s the thing: she didn’t care. It didn’t matter to Campbell that she was putting in all this effort just to move backwards. She just wanted to MOVE, and any direction was the “right direction.” She was really, really pleased with herself. So Georgia and I applauded and cheered, and it was a fun little morning.

I think there are some lessons in there about life, and motherhood. (But right now I have to hunt down our “1” candle, because Georgia turns 1 tomorrow. We have a 2, two 3s, and a 4. I know we had a 1, because we used it twice in the past, but of course I can’t find it now. Fate of the third child.)

I am an only child. And Erick was an only child for the first five years of his life, until his brother was born. In other words, we had absolutely no preparation for what is going on in our house.

Our three girls are 20 and 19 months apart, respectively. Fiona tells me she has no memory of life without Campbell. (Which really makes me wish we hadn’t crammed so much into those first 20 months of her life. Taking a 4-month-old to the aquarium? Can you say “First-time parents?”). I’m willing to guess that, when Campbell’s old enough to express it, she’ll tell me she has no memory of life without Georgia. And Georgia will never, ever know what it’s like to not share a house with two incredibly loud and overly affectionate big sisters.

Campbell turned 2 shortly after we moved to Vermont, and that milestone was also a turning point for the relationship between Fiona and Campbell. It’s hard for me to put into words what this sister relationship is like. Perhaps those of you who are blessed with sisters could do a better job, but perhaps it’s really a nonverbal force. I will say that their relationship gets stronger every day (and louder, and more fraught with fights), that it’s one of the things that makes me happiest about being a parent; Erick and I find ourselves looking over their heads at each other and exchanging “WOW” glances almost daily.

It’s hard to imagine two people better suited to each other than Fiona and Campbell. Fiona is more moody and introspective, but sweetly sensitive to the emotions of others; Campbell lives life all out on the surface, and could care less what others think of her. Look askance at Fiona and she’ll crumble; yell at Campbell and she’ll either ignore you or smile. Fiona has a very active imagination and is scared by even the thought of evil; Campbell will tell you several times a day that she’s “not afraid of anything!” Except that Campbell is really, really afraid of doctors; Fiona loves going to the doctor. When they play princess, Fiona is always the princess, and Campbell is almost always her pet cat (or lion). BUT, they both love chocolate, and ice cream, and peanut butter, and singing, and reading, and running around in circles, and flashlights, and building pillow forts, and animals, etc etc. Here are a few examples to illustrate their relationship:

-Campbell rarely addresses Fiona by her actual name; to her, Fiona is “Sister.” I finally pointed out to Campbell that she does, in fact, have another sister, which might become confusing once Georgia is old enough to respond. Campbell looked at me blankly, and continued playing.

-Due to a combination of their birthdays and the kindergarten cut-off date here, Campbell will be just one year behind Fiona in school. This means that next year they’ll be attending the same preschool, Fiona with the 4-year-olds and Campbell with the 3-year-olds. Fiona can’t wait; she’s already telling Campbell: “Next year you’ll be a big girl and you’ll go to my preschool. You’ll be in the 3-year-old room, but I’ll see you on the playground.” And Campbell can’t wait; she told me, “Next year I’ll protect Sister at naptime and on the playground.” I’m sure she will.

-When Fiona started full-day preschool this year, I thought that Campbell (as the classically overlooked middle child) would relish the chance to have three days a week alone with me. I was wrong. By about 11:00 each preschool day, Campbell and I have some version of this exchange:

C: Mommy, where’s Sister?

Me: She’s at preschool, Cams. We’ll pick her up this afternoon.

C: Let’s go pick her up now!

Me: Why?

C: Because…I love her!

-And finally, the sleeping situation. One of the best parenting decisions we ever made was to have our girls share a room. This was partly necessity: living in the Bay Area on a graduate student’s stipend, we couldn’t afford to rent more than a 2-bedroom house — and partly philosophy: we knew from recent travels in East Africa that our girls were lucky to have beds, let alone a room/we hoped they’d learn the joys of sharing/we hoped they’d become better sleepers as a result.

Well, it’s hard to know whether sharing a room made them good sleepers, but if one sister wakes up screaming in the night, the other two do have an amazing ability to sleep through it. This soundness of sleeping is offset somewhat by the nightly bedtime party that happens after we say goodnight and shut the door; our girls probably get to sleep much later than they would sleeping alone, since they spend upwards of an hour talking, singing, and playing in bed. (For an idea of what this sounds like, imagine Kate Bush, times 3. Imagine these 3 Kate Bushes singing, for the sake of argument, “Wuthering Heights,” but each at a 1 second delay. And there you have it). This has only intensified since Fiona decided that sharing a room wasn’t enough; now she shares a bed with Campbell. So, the scene at bedtime is this: Campbell at the head of her twin bed, Fiona facing her at the foot, and Georgia standing up and peeking over the railing of her crib to see what her crazy sisters are up to. And they love it; they love, love, love it.

This sisterly sleeping arrangement is my biggest carrot and stick. If there’s too much fighting or laughing after bedtime, all I have to do is threaten to move somebody to another room, and everything settles immediately. On the other hand, just about the best reward I can offer them (besides chocolate) is the chance to nap together. I separate the girls for naps, because Fiona doesn’t usually sleep during naptime anymore and Campbell still needs her sleep, but they lobbied so hard to be able to nap together that I’ve started to allow it as a once-a-week “treat.” Nobody sleeps, but they will happily not nap together for hours.

Where Georgia will fit in to all of this, I just don’t know. What I do know is that both of her older sisters adore her, and they want to hug, hold, and carry her until she gets fed up. Georgia adores them back; her huge smile lights up whenever she sees one of her sisters, and she is just chomping at the bit to be able to join in their shenanigans. But the oldest two are so close, it’s almost enough to make us have a fourth child just to give Georgia her own special buddy. Almost.

I know these girls will grow up and fight more, and about more serious things than who gets to hold the Barbie. I know that a day will come when they’ll want their own rooms. I know that they may end up living miles away from each other. But whatever happens, I just hope that they will love each other forever. I hope that Campbell will always be willing to protect Fiona at naptime, and I hope that Fiona will always be willing to hold Campbell’s hand at the doctor’s office. Because I can’t think of a better gift as a parent than to know that your kids will have each other after you’re gone.