This weekend we attended the neighborhood easter egg hunt with Finn. It’s gotten bigger every year, which means there are more people we haven’t met, and this year our neighbor friends were out of town so the Lockardugans went stag.

Jen and I have loosened our watch on Finn, confident in her ability to introduce herself and make new friends, but after the candy came out we made sure to keep an eye on her sugar intake. At one point I tailed her to an adjoining backyard, where a mixed pack of kids were organizing some kind of team play, and Finn, fearless as usual, walked right up to them and asked what they were doing. One boy in particular seemed to be the alpha male and had been busy ordering the other kids around, and for whatever reason they seemed to be listening to him. His voice got more and more strident as he tried to tell them what he wanted them to do, and suddenly he decided he didn’t want girls playing his game. Finn took all this in for a few minutes, and as I watched, she marched up into his face and yelled, “You’re just a big bossypants, and you don’t go around bossing me around and yelling in my face!”

With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the yard. The other kids melted away from the bully, his spell broken by my daughter’s assertion. She walked past me, talking to herself: “When a bully bosses you around, you get right up in his face and tell him YOU DON”T BULLY ME, bossypants.” All I could do was follow in her wake and marvel at her courage.

Sadly, there were no other parents in the area who I could nudge and say, “THAT’S MY GIRL! PARENTAL WIN!”