Fretwork

Jiejie has been very whiny since school let out a week ago. She wants to sit on my lap constantly and be my baby, which is fine. I love to baby her. But the baby behavior has extended to refusing to take her vitamins and allergy medicine. Jiejie has even been whining in her sleep. Well, one night, anyway. She wanted a round bandaid and we had no round bandaids in our huge assortment. Could she seriously have been whimpering about a bandaid in her sleep? It was the first thing she asked for in the morning. Should she have more perspective at age 6? I don't think I did. Magnitude was directly related to how badly I wanted something. I guess she is a lot like me. Too much like me, perhaps. But I have grown out of my willfulness. I am no match for her. But what do you do when a child her age refuses to do something? I won't physically force her. What is a disciplinary measure appropriate to the infraction? One that would be instructive and constructive?
These are the little worries that have been nagging at me this week as I wondered if Jiejie was just tired, if her allergies were making her grumpy, if a few days of missing her Omega 3s had had a behavioral effect, if it was simply a case of missing the routine of full-day Kindergarten, or if she was mourning her birth parents or having some kind of attachment crisis or appendicitis or swine flu or west nile virus or ...