Sorry, No Hugs

Today was a first. Ricki went to school today without a hug. She was angry, and finally left the house sticking her tongue out at me.
The morning had started out very good. Yesterday evening Ricki had, for the first time in recent history, gone to bed and fallen asleep on time. So she woke up energetic and calm. She requested pancakes for breakfast and I gladly obliged, cooking them as she got dressed. We even had time to sew on three missing buttons to her school uniform.
However, as she was about to leave, I saw that she had (in addition to the hair clip on her head) three additional hair clips in her hand. I understood that she was intending to put them on as additions to her “hairdo”, and she would end up looking VERY “weird”. I wouldn’t mind her CHANGING them at school, but not to start off the day with 4 hair clips scattered on her scalp. I insisted that she return them to me, and after a bit of bickering between us, she returned two of the three. However, the third one was the clip she had tried, over my protests, to add to her hair earlier, after getting dressed. I explained why she could not wear it, offered to help her switch the present one, just not to wear two. She bitterly disagreed. She wanted her present one, and this extra one stuck on the side. I told her that Mommy does NOT ALLOW, and that my answer was final. She said OK., handed me the clip, and prepared to leave. She then asked to put the clip away. I said OK and handed it to her. At that point she went out the door, and turned for her “goodbye hug”.
Now when Ricki leaves for school, I tend to be lenient about things, simply because I need to get her out and going. But NO WAY was I going to go through the lovey-duvey goodbye hug after her disobeying AND lying to me, and I told her so. She kept insisting on the hug, the driver downstairs was honking impatiently, and I simply told my husband:
:I don’t care if she walks to school. I don’t care if she MISSES school, but she is not going to get a hug if she won’t accept my authority.”
So in the end she finally stuck out her tongue, and went off to school.

It’s a bad way to start off the day.... but a beginning to the lesson that “if you want respect, if you want favors, you have to listen to authority “.
But I miss the hug. I love this kid. But I love her enough to try and make her future a good one. And for that she needs to know that there are rules.