Teresa has a new favorite phrase, and it’s one that I’ve grown tired of hearing after only a few days. It’s “I don’t like …” This soup. These shoes. Those socks. Whatever. Part of it is timing. She decided she didn’t like the soup after she had eaten almost a whole bowl of it, so I took it to mean that she just didn’t want any more. But really, what parent wants to serve their child a meal only to be told “I don’t like it”? She liked it just fine when I put it down. The clothes are a little different. She’s recently developed an aversion to certain styles of socks, and while she liked them well enough a few weeks ago, perhaps her feet have grown just enough to make them uncomfortable. And no one should be forced to spend the day with uncomfortable feet. But still, it would be nice to know before we get the shoes on and tied that the socks aren’t going to work. As for the shoes, well, usually that comes out when she wants to wear the purple plastic high heels from the dress-up box, the ones she’s not allowed to wear outside the house because they are three sizes too big and we don’t want her to get hurt. Three things she doesn’t like, three different meanings. Maybe that’s why I don’t like this phase, or this phrase. I have to think too hard to figure out how to respond. You say you don’t like your food once your belly is full? Well, good. It’s healthy to stop eating when you have had enough. You don’t like these socks because they aren’t comfortable? OK, time to put them in the too-small box and get some new socks. You don’t like these shoes because you’d rather have the ones I already said you couldn’t wear? Too bad, you still can’t wear them. If you’d rather put on the purple sneakers, however, that’s fine with me. I suppose I would like for Teresa to tell me what’s really up, rather than starting with a blanket “I don’t like …” Or maybe I would prefer if she started by telling me what she did want: “I want to be done with my lunch now.” “I want different socks.” “I want my plastic high heels.” At least that wouldn’t leave me guessing, and would allow me to give more positive answers, at least in some cases. But really, it’s not so long ago that she couldn’t speak at all, and the only way she could tell me something was wrong was by crying, so this is a vast improvement. Now, at the very least, I know if she’s upset about her dinner or her clothes. It makes me think about how we pray, and what we ask for. Are we as negative, as inarticulate with our own wants and needs when we take them to God? Do we complain too much? It seems to me that figuring out what we want to ask God for is half the battle. Maybe figuring it out is one of the answers we get when we pray; I know time spent in quiet prayer can help me move from an inchoate discontent to a resolve to do something about it, or even just a resolve to live with something I can’t change. But I don’t always like it.