Losing it, over a napkin

You know I am a good mom. Pleasant, patient, well manered, caring, open to reason, you can go on.

And I was doing all those things when I took my my 5 year old and 2 year old to IKEA. And so we all had a great time, you know, hot dogs for lunch followed by ice cream, singing in the car all the way home. And so it's only natural to expect the day to end in a equally pleasent mood.

So we get home and excitedly open up this colorful storage thing that we bought from IKEA, which I had intended to use as a laundry basket for the kids and placed it in the room.

And so, my 2 year old is so exited and wasted no time putting a napkin in which she used to wipe her wet hands. A while later my 5 year old changes her clothes and puts them in the laundry basket and "RAAAAAAAAAAAH". No, not Harry's dinasour but something had got into my 5 year old. She roared, she wailed, she screamed, she stomped and did every single thing that I did not expect her to do.

All for the fact that there was a NAPKIN IN THE LAUNDRY BASKET. Its not a place for napkin. Its only for clothes.

So what would a pleasant, patient, well manered, caring, open to reason mom like me do? Let her finish throwing her tantrum and patiently reason with her about the napkin, something like that right?. But it's the way she did the whole thing, showing she was incharged and she decided what went where. Now that really threw me off. And so there was a need, an overwhelming need to exert my authority as her mother, as the person whose rules you follow. And as much as she insisted that the NAPKIN should be OUT I ensured that it remained IN. And needless to say that I won the battle shamelessly exerting my authority as an adult, threatening punishment and injury, for which I am so very shameful now.

Why does it happen? Why do we end up like this? I really don't know. She is clearly behaving like a 5 year old but why do I feel the need to behave like one as well?