I pulled the plug out of the bath.

That's it. That's the whole inciting incident. I pulled the plug, because bath time was over, because it was late, because it had been a big week of sport and activities and everyone was running on fumes including me.

Isla-Rose lost it.

Not upset. Lost it. She wanted to pull the plug herself, apparently, and hadn't communicated this, and now the water was draining and the injustice of it was enormous. Screaming. Actual screaming, the kind that makes you briefly reconsider every parenting choice you've ever made in real time.

London, who had nothing to do with any of this, heard the screaming and decided she was also upset, possibly on principle, possibly out of solidarity, possibly because it was late and contagious hysteria is a real thing in small children.

So now there were two of them going off, over a bath plug, at the end of a day that had already asked enough of everyone. I was standing there, dripping, holding a small plastic plug like it was evidence in a trial, wondering how we'd got here. The cat chose this exact moment to walk in and shit on the rug, which felt less like an accident and more like a comment.

Elise appeared in the doorway at some point in the middle of all this, took one look at the scene, and made the very sensible decision that this was a job for backup arriving later rather than backup arriving now. I do not blame her.

At some point in the middle of the screaming, standing there holding a bath plug like it was a murder weapon, I pulled out my phone and googled how to help a strong-willed kid learn to be more flexible, more willing to listen, less locked into whatever she's already decided is true. Not my finest parenting moment, googling advice mid-crisis instead of just being present for it, but there I was.

The search returned a book. I am already halfway through that exact book. On Audible. Started it weeks ago, got distracted by something else, the way I get distracted by most things I start with good intentions, and it's been sitting there in my library, half-finished, patiently waiting for me to remember it exists. So that's where I was at, standing in a wet bathroom, googling the solution to a problem I already own the solution to, because I stopped paying attention halfway through. I'm not sure Isla-Rose's stubbornness and my own follow-through are entirely unrelated character traits. I have some suspicions.

Somehow, thirty minutes later, everyone was in the lounge room playing Connect Four. No debrief. No cooling-off period. Just a sudden, unannounced ceasefire and a board getting set up like the last half hour hadn't happened. I don't go easy on them. Never have. If they win, they've actually won, and they know it, and the celebration when it happens is enormous and completely earned. I let them take back a move here and there, not because I'm soft, but because it's the only way they'll ever learn to think three moves ahead instead of just wherever the shiny gap is. It's a surprisingly good game for that. Cause and consequence, right there on the table, four in a row or nothing.

Twenty minutes earlier, in that same room, it had been screaming and a cat crime scene. Now it was concentrated silence and someone quietly working out that if they play there, I'll have to block there, which opens up there. Like the bath had happened to somebody else's family.

Later that night, once everyone was calm and fed and the rug situation had been dealt with, Elise and I sat down with Isla-Rose properly. Talked it through. Explained it was just a plug, just bath water, nothing worth that much noise over. She nodded along, said she understood, said she'd be more conscious next time. We looked at each other afterward with the specific satisfaction of parents who believe they've had A Moment. A real breakthrough. She heard us. She's growing. Bonding achieved.

The next evening, I pulled the plug out of the bath. It started again.

I don't have a tidy lesson for you this week. The bath happened. The cat happened. The Connect Four happened. The heartfelt chat happened, and it changed absolutely nothing by the following night. I'll probably still be googling this same question in a year, still half-finished with that same book, and Isla-Rose will probably still be losing her mind over a bath plug, and somehow we'll all still end up on the lounge room floor forty minutes later like nothing occurred. Maybe that's not a failure of parenting. Maybe that's just what the whole thing actually looks like up close.

Until next time,
Broden Johnson