Friday, February 27, 2009

Sometimes it is easy to forget that she is only 4

GIRL started talking early. She has been able to carry on full, interactive conversations now for some time, rather than just the stream-of-consciousness monologues thrust at you by many her age. Sometimes it is easy to forget that she is only 4. She grasps intricate concepts, and she is what we like to call in the theater world, a quick study. She memorizes things very fast. A few weeks ago, I was reading aloud to BOY a letter that had come home for the parents, detailing how they would be doing a different shape each day and plan the morning's activities around that particular shape. There was a schedule of: Monday: circle, Tuesday: square, etc. I read it once aloud, and the next day GIRL recited most of the week's shape schedule. She had memorized it from my saying it aloud one time. It was impressive.

When she and I are out and about, people will overhear her conversing with me at the grocery store, or on some errand and will comment on her dexterity with language. It is fun. Except when she starts with the questions...ahhh, yes the questions. Why? Why? Why? And after I explain, with some detail, she goes deeper into the WHY? She is a critical thinker.

The blessings are many with this GIRL of mine. She is the best company you could hope for, and has a pretty good gauge on when she's had enough.

"I didn't know that shopping would take THIS long..."

Rather than a tantrum in the store.

Or: "Mommy, I'm tiiired." Some days, she needs to go to her room and chill for an hour with a stack of books. I like to listen at the door and hear her "reading" them aloud. At night, when she's really tired - she's tired, she knows it, and she wants to go to bed.

There are always exceptions, but basically that is how she flies. She is incredibly loyal and delights in her friendships. She loves to make art projects for everyone in the family, including BOY. The rate at which she is learning to write her letters is amazing. I take joy in her pleasure.

But, heaven help you if you go up against her. She is tough. And...she has a fiery temper. When she's really upset she works herself up into such a state that she gets scared she won't be able to come back down.

There are times when she takes my breath away. She is a brainiac. She is competitive. And she is strong willed. All qualities I would have loved to have. All qualities that I am so happy that she has for herself. Yet, qualities that are a challenge to parent...


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15 comments:

  1. i treasure those strong personality traits in my kids even as they challenge me. and man, do they challenge me today.

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  2. She sounds so much like my daughter--yes, she will try you and bring you joy.

    My daughter's talent was directions--when she was 3+1/2 she was in the car with a new neighbor and her son. Neighbor mused aloud that she wished she knew where the park was? "Which one?" Social Butterfly asked and proceeded to give her turn-by-turn directions.

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  3. I love reading this. It's like you are thinking it through, trying to describe her, and it's a way you "learn" her and understand her. For a reader like me it fleshes her out, and adds to her "personhood." At four. It's true - they come out of the womb as a fully formed personality - for us to fulfill or to block. I felt that way about mine. You are giving yours a wonderful nurturing start.

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  4. I love watching these mini-adults in action. GIRL sounds alot like my Girl #2 and she makes me crazy, but I wouldn't trade her for the world. There's great joy in those strong personalities.

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  5. Conundrum - raising the girl you wish you were is harder than you realized. But so worth it.

    My daughter is usually the one to announce she's going to bed, except last night when she discovered the Love of Bunco...The strong-will kicked in against sleep.

    (Lovely writing about Girl :D)

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  6. Aren't they wonderful? I look back on my soon to be 21 year old daughter and see the seeds way back then, at age 3-5. I love the poem by K. Gibran who writes of children this way....

    "Your children are not your children.
    They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
    They come through you but not from you,
    And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
    You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
    For they have their own thoughts.
    You may house their bodies but not their souls,
    for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
    which you can not visit, not even in your dreams.
    You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
    For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.
    You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
    The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends
    you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
    Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
    for even as He loves the arrow which flies,
    so He loves also the bow which is stable."

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  7. Girl and I would be good shopping partners--snappy and quick. With ice cream afterward.

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  8. If Girl were to marry Gremlin, there would be no survivors.

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  9. did she inherit the quality from her dad then? *wink*

    and 4year old is also known as the "Why-years" *laugh*
    I'm going through it again for my younger one.... so you are not alone. *wink* just get creative!

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  10. It always amazes me how they are all so different. All four of mine are entirely different.

    Your daughter sounds a lot like mine. She was an early talker and a free thinker with lots of questions. And as a teenager and adult (she is now 20) so independant. She took herself off round the world at 18 and did voluntary service in Indonesia for six months. She's now at University and thriving.

    Girl sounds wonderful. Never try to curb her spirit - I think that is where parents often go wrong, understandably as it makes the parenting job easier!

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  11. I love what each child brings to the table.

    She sounds heavenly and hard - as well she should, I imagine.

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  12. She's got a great start: love of books, verbal articulation and an awareness of when she needs stimulationa and when she needs solitude. Wow. Just...wow!

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  13. She's amazing. And I could have written that about the Queen at age 4. Well, not THAT, because I don't write as beautifully as you do. But it's all very familiar.

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  14. Girls change always somebody told me is that real true or not i don't really. But i love my mother and every family member

    Btw my new site granite kitchen worktops comapny

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