tears of a clown

My 9-year-old has this problem: I instruct my oldest child to go to bed, usually at a reasonable hour. Less than one hour after she's sent to bed, she appears at the door to my room, on the verge of tears. The tears are brought on by various things and this has been happening since she was 6. Not every night anymore, but tonight takes the cake.

The waterworks begin with the phrase, "I was getting into bed and I tripped over something under my bed." (I looked at her feet at this point to determine injury; none there.) "And I noticed my trombone," she sobs, "and I remembered that I have not practiced once since school let out." We are in full-on wail at this point. I am laughing hysterically at her, knowing that I am hurting her feelings, but completely unable to stop. "I came up here now," she continues through her tears, "to see if we can somehow manage to fit practice into my schedule because I get so busy, I know I'm going to forget..." Tears are streaming down my own face now.
"Busy doing WHAT???" I'm laughing. "Squeeze trombone practice in between forcing you to put on clean clothes every morning and brushing your teeth? After I stuff food down your gullet or after you lounge on the couch playing Nintendo or watching a movie? Or perhaps sometime between playing in the pool and grousing about picking dirty clothes up off of the floor surrounding your laundry basket? Can we talk about this tomorrow?"

Oooh, but she is mad at me now. She flounced out of the room crying down the stairs and all I could do was turn to Tad and start laughing all over again.

My cheeks hurt!