Her mouth quirked upward and her hands shot to position to cover the smile before I could see it.

Apple. Tree. Dejavous.

My anger faltered, because my knee-jerk reaction is to smile in response when my personality's twin brings me a sunny-side up, but she knows this by now. She knows I'll crack and the lesson will be left unlearned.

No. I bucked up and remembered the cause.

"You need to brush your teeth NOW." Of course, this was the fifth now in the fifth minute, but the only one counting is the one who has to repeat it.

"No."

My eyes swung back to hers.

She had been waiting for me to do this, for the felonious smile didn't even have a chance to see the light of day, her hands stayed in position.

"I told you to brush your teeth." My voice was quieter this time, more intense.

"NO." Her voice was quieter too, muffled by her logic that if I couldn't see the smile, it ain't happening.

I reached behind her and swatted her on the butt. Not hard. Never hard. (Let's not get into the entire "Hitting or not hitting" debate. I'm just telling it like it is.) (Or was.)

She danced away and brought her hands down to sing out, "That didn't hurt!"

Welcome to my evening routine.

 Not the bum swatting part. We're more of a words oriented discipline style in this family, but the defiance, the laziness, the unwillingness to get up off her duff and do the most minute task, be it washing her face, brushing her teeth, dressing up or down, the sheer brazenness accompanying her rejection of the rules, this has become an established commercial break in an otherwise formerly enjoyable program.

As John's work hours extend beyond seven or even eight depending on his tasks, dinner, bath, and bedtime reading typically fall to me, and I do look forward to our time together, just Sprite and me.

Or, I did.

I've tried many techniques all promoted by leading parenting magazines, Super Moms, and the nosy busy bodies who think my disciplining Sprite in a public setting needs some tweaking.

"Quietly assert your authority."

And then watch, almost helplessly as she loudly asserts her newly found, still in its packaging, independence.

"Repeat yourself only once. Then quietly take action."

I'm still very convinced that Dora the Explorer is behind all this repetition necessity with every child in America. I'm almost sure the next time I do repeat myself, she'll come back at me with "SAY IT LOUDER POR FAVOR!" Also, quietly taking action? How do you quietly take action when trying to get them to brush their teeth? Not only do they turn to dead weight, but trying to wield the toothbrush without gagging them accidentally is a task I'm not about to take on.

"Take away something important."

She's lost out on story time three times in the past week. And I'm losing out too, because this makes bedtime tense and strained as she is crying out of anger in losing something she and I both love, and I'm pulling my hair out in a bid to stay standing in the turbulent ocean of parental righteousness. The buoy of giving in is so close and I'm feeling seasick.

"Tell your child you don't like what they're doing."

Can I tell the author I don't like what they're writing? Welcome to the society of "every child is super special, everyone's a winner in their own way, and the word 'no' does not exist in our Utopian world, here's your Kool-Aid". Kids these days are so used to hearing the negatives being tossed gently, underhand, of course, it's like a slap on the wind passing over the hand because you're berating the actions, not the perpetrators.

"Tell her how you're feeling."

She's not even listening. So bite me. Oh, wait, the static rebounding from the clomping of your imperial high horse probably means you're not listening either.

Last night, I crossed a threshold I never thought I would, hadn't even considered. I told her I didn't like her. Point blank. In your face.

Fuming over her giggles and ignorance, I sat down on her bed. "Can I be honest with you?"

She peaked out at me from underneath the fall of hair, her hand still perched over her mouth. "Yes."

"Right now, you are NOT a nice girl. You're not being a nice daughter, and you are not respecting me."

She laughed a little more, partly from embarrassment, partly because my words were just washing right over her.

"I love you very much, but right now? The way you're acting? I don't like you."

The smile dropped immediately. Her mouth turned upside down as the hand disappeared and her eyes filled with shocked tears. "That's not nice!" she cried.

I maintained my stoic face, not bending to her emotion. "That's how I feel."

"You're not SUPPOSED to not like me!"

My brows arched in response. "I am completely allowed to not like you sometimes."

"No you're not."

I had her attention. "Sprite, when I send you to time out, do you like me?"

"...No."

"You still love me though, right?"

"...Yes."

"Like and love are two completely different things. I'll never stop loving you, but I don't have to like you all the time."

Her sobs calmed a bit, she ducked her head shyly as I opened my arms to her. Falling into my embrace, our Cosby moment crescendo-ed and I whispered another love promise into her hair, her feathery answer cementing our bond. A flower blossomed in the dew of the departed storm as she promised to listen better next time.

Then John came into the room.

Sprite saw her opportunity as she pulled away from me. "Daddy, Mommy said not nice things to me!"

John looked from me to her and back again. "What did she say?"

Sprite glanced at me, the smile hinted back. "I dunno."

Taking her cue, I outed myself. "I told her she wasn't nice, she wasn't respecting me and right now, I don't like her."

John opened and closed his mouth in shock as he processed my words. Sprite, taking this silence as an opportunity, dissolved into a fresh set of loud tears and burrowed her head into her sheets.

"You said what?"

"We'll talk about it later."

Oh, we would definitely talk about it later..

He left the room, Sprite's head poking up and watching his retreat before the crying stopped completely and the hands came up once more to cover the smile that immediately popped in.

All show. For her dad. Which would land me in a thirty minute conversation about how I should probably choose better words for discipline's sake.

End point: I felt like absolute shit, even though I stood by what I had said. After I left her room, and explained myself to John, who finally understood where I was coming from, I slipped back into her room and cuddled a semi-conscious five year old, who had no idea that my verbal slap had rebounded and left the stinging mark in my own mind.

As a friend mentioned on Facebook when I posted my status about it, "Girls are HARD."