Trying to figure out my daughter

I know that all parents have that, "What on earth is my child thinking? Why is he acting this way? I just don't understand!" reaction fairly often. And while I know all children are little mysteries, my older daughter sometimes is more of a mystery to me than I would like.

I typically find myself describing her as "stubborn" or "a little strong-willed", and while that is accurate, it does not fully describe the aspect of her personality I can't figure out. Here is a prime example:

Last night we were playing a family game of Uno. Both kids enjoy it, and while Eleanor needs a bit of prompting, matching the colors or numbers is well within her grasp at this point. But the game goes sort of like this:

"OK, Eleanor, it's a blue 2. Do you have a blue card?" (since she can't hold all her cards, they're sitting on the table, making it pretty easy to help her out.)

She smirks, hides her cards in her lap for a moment, and pulls out a green card! She knows perfectly well it's green, but chooses it anyway.

Several times, she figured out an appropriate card to play by herself. Once, she played it in the right place...but upside down. Once, she played it on top of the deck we draw from. Once, she tried to play it but hide it under some other cards in the stack. Once, she tried to play two (appropriate) cards.

She loves playing Wild cards, and whacks them down with gusto. But when we ask, "What color do you want it to be?" she won't ever say a color. She clams up, and eventually will hold out a card from her hand and wave it at us, and we say, "OK, Eleanor picks yellow" or whatever.

She likes to deal, but after going around the circle adding cards once, she wants to switch directions. Then she wants to start in a different spot.

She wants to play. She even likes to win (though she doesn't at all mind losing). She does not want to quit...but she doesn't want to follow the social "rules" of appropriate behavior when playing a game. In linguistics, we'd maybe say that she is flouting the maxim of cooperation, or that she does not understand or care about the pragmatics of the situation.

The Uno example is just kind of cute and silly, but it really exemplifies her behavior in all areas of life. Basically, she does not ever want to cooperate or do what she's "supposed" to do. Why on earth not? This is so unlike me, my spouse, and my older son that I'm not sure how to handle it.

Often, like in an Uno game, it's not important enough to need to "handle". But envision this kind of reaction - not quite rebelling but definitely not obeying - every time you ask her to do anything: put away your toys, stop sitting on your baby sister, hold hands while crossing the street, tell me what sound that letter makes, be respectful to your babysitter. Sometimes reverse psychology does work on her, and sometimes bribery or threats work. But sometimes nothing does. And I don't want to resort to bribery or threats; eventually, shouldn't pleasing mom/dad/teacher/friends/God be a reward in itself? The intrinsic societal and spiritual reward of cooperation and obedience? (I know, I know; this is my natural people-pleaser personality talking.)

So what IS this behavior? Yes, she's three and a half; I don't expect perfection, but I also know a whole lot of other three year olds. The compliant ones tend to cooperate, the strong-willed ones will throw tantrums when thwarted. Is this being passive aggressive? Is this just a different kind of strong-willed behavior? Is she just trying to be cute, or creative? Does she just want extra attention?

I should note that I haven't noticed this behavior much when she's playing with other kids, or at least when she's playing with Miles. I also don't see it as much in class situations; she seems to listen to and more or less follow directions in gymnastics, in Sunday School, and in swimming (though it's possible her teachers might disagree with me here!) But with authority figures whom she knows well - mom, dad, grandparents, babysitters, etc. - it appears pretty regularly. Is that because she knows those people well and is comfortable with them?

And most important of all, how do I teach a child like this? How can I encourage her to obey, to cooperate? I pray that her stubbornness and creativity will turn into assets for her as she grows up; I know they can be great strengths if she learns how to harness them. But a child who does not respect authority or any kind of convention is not going to be well-liked or successful in life.

Being a "trailblazer", going her own way, being unconventional - those describe choices we make as adults that can be great life decisions. But somehow, I have to teach my daughter to function in society without society crushing her before she reaches adulthood, because a lifetime spent in time-outs and detentions and being held back a grade and being avoided by other children just cannot be good for her psyche no matter how independent-minded she is.

Advice welcome!

Nora's first professional hairstyle

We had our first morning with "Miss Tamekia" today, and I am totally sold! This wonderful stylist/hair consultant came to our house, gave me a 45-minute lesson on improving my hairstyling techniques, then braided Eleanor's hair (about six times faster than I can), and THEN took me to the store to buy styling products so I can try to copy the process. Eleanor has "fancy" hair now, and I have a new arsenal of ideas and equipment (and now I know why my braids get fuzzy so quickly, how to get my twists to stay put, how to get my knots not to come undone, etc). Besides being good at what she does, this is a lovely and friendly woman who answered all my questions and made both of us feel totally comfortable. I am DEFINITELY bringing her back.

A couple photos (I added the beads myself):






In case you can't tell, she has a zigzag part in front with braids going perpendicular to each other, with two "star" clusters of braids in back coming together to make pigtails of braids, and then some vertical braids at the bottom.

Incidentally, doesn't my daughter have a lovely profile?

Eleanor's butterfly birthday party

So I settled on a butterfly theme for Nora's 3rd birthday. We invited over six of her three- and almost-three-year-old girlfriends, played a couple games, made a craft, and ate snacks and cupcakes. It went off pretty well! I am convinced that for this age, a morning time slot and brief duration (less than 90 minutes) are key.

Here's Eleanor in her butterfly dress (which I made last fall, but she hadn't gotten to wear yet), matching beads on her braids, and the blingy necklace and bracelet I made her for her birthday (real pearls and Swarovski crystal, thank you very much!) Of course, after about five minutes, she got tired of them and whined until I took the necklace and bracelet off. Sigh. Oh well; maybe in a few months I can win her over.



The bracelet, complete with butterfly charm.



I also made matching name bracelets as party favors for all her little friends, rather than the usual goody bags full of candy and small things to lose or throw away.


As the girls arrived, we gave them each "butterfly antenna" headbands to wear. We played "pin (well, tape) the antenna on the butterfly" first. Butterfly poster courtesy of Scott!








Then we headed downstairs to make our craft: tissue paper flowers. I tried to pick something within a three-year-old's grasp, but I overestimated; it was beyond one of the parents, too! The girls liked the flowers, though their involvement basically extended to choosing the colors of tissue paper.

Our final activity was supposed to be a butterfly hunt (like an Easter Egg hunt ) but I couldn't find any tiny plastic butterflies, so instead we hunted for the butterfly's "friends" (snakes, lizards, frogs, and other bugs), which Scott hid around the upstairs during craft time.





For snack/lunch, we had fruit, "caterpillars in cocoons" (aka pigs in blankets, but I thought my renaming was fairly clever), and tiny finger sandwiches in the shapes of butterflies and flowers.

And of course, the piece de resistance: butterfly cupcakes!



I made eighteen of them, in pink and yellow. The wings and antenna are made out of chocolate and pastel melts, freehanded onto wax paper and then wedged into the frosting with some chocolate frosting for bodies. Pretty cute!


It was kind of hard to fit candles on, though!


All in all, a good party! And this afternoon, the whole family got naps, so a good day for all!

not the best day

It was a rainy morning. Which means I slept very well, and found it difficult to get up. In fact, I shut off my alarm and just lay in bed until Miles woke me up (which I knew he would do sooner or later). We were lazy in bed together until Eleanor joined us. I asked her to go potty, but she refused to do so without help, and I was just too drowsy. Until she started crying that she peed in her diaper, and - waddling like a bowlegged duck - finally agreed to go to the bathroom. Then I had to get up.

I skipped my workout (it was too late, after all) and decided to do creative projects with the kids: namely, I chopped up a cardboard box in to millions (actually 121) tiny pieces, and with their tempera paints, painted different colored numerals on each one. It was my intent to make a version of the "Math-It" game I played with in my homeschooled childhood, to encourage Miles to learn his addition facts. And the game creation went pretty well. The kids entertained themselves for an abysmally short time stringing beads onto necklaces with the new blunt needles I had bought especially for the purpose. Eleanor then went around whacking things with Miles' plastic ruler. And I kid you not, twelve seconds after I said, "Nora, please don't hit things with the ruler; it might break and you would hurt yourself," it happened. The ruler shattered, and one piece grazed her eyeball. She's crying, I'm panicking, and Miles is screaming his head off that she broke HIS ruler! Her eye bled a tiny bit, but she stopped crying rapidly, and it looked like just a scrape on the white part of her left eye. She seemed fine, but I dutifully called the pediatrician to see what he thought, and NATURALLY he said he thought I ought to take her to the ER to get checked out. We don't mess around with eye injuries, he says.

OK, fine. Miles is still howling about his broken ruler, while Nora is excitedly repeating, "We get to go to the doctor now? I get to see the doctor. He will look at my eye. Can we go now, Mommy? My eye is OK. But the doctor will look at it. Let's go to the doctor!" You get the idea.

IS there a good ER to go to with small children? I dread it. Swedish Covenant has a nice waiting room, but nary a toy or a children's magazine. The attractive fishtank amuses for a while, but not for an hour and a half, I'm afraid. Anyway, after 90 minutes of trying to keep my whining, overactive, and starving children from drumming on the backs of grouchy sick people's chairs, tapping on the fishtank glass, swinging on the velvet ropes marking out the place to stand in line, running laps around the waiting room, and slaloming around frail old ladies in walkers, we finally got in for our 30 seconds with the doctor. She looked at Nora's eye, said "She seems fine, right? I don't think we need to bother checking the cornea. It looks fine to me. Here's a prescription for some antibiotic eye drops just to keep infection at bay."

OK, my doctor could have done that. WAY faster. And cheaper. (Did I mention how long we had to play Ring-around-the rosy, London bridge, and "let's pretend we are seeds growing into plants" in the tiny cubicle before the doctor even showed UP?)

What a waste of a day.

Now I'm sitting on the sofa feeling VERY frustrated with my attempt to translate Mandan (an almost extinct Native American language). I'm supposed to be presenting my "findings" at a symposium in three weeks, and I don't HAVE any findings, and it's ruining the precious remainder of my spring break. Why did I sign up for this?

disillusioned

I was working on Eleanor's hair the other morning (is it just me or do a lot of my anecdotes start out like that? Somehow I think this hair thing is consuming more of my time than I realize.) Eleanor, bored, starts fiddling around with the plastic container of shea butter (for her skin, not hair).

Eleanor: Thank you, God, for this!

me, thinking to myself: how sweet! Something is sinking in!

A few moments later, Eleanor still can't get the plastic tub open.

Eleanor: This is too hard, God!

me, thinking to myself: oh look, and now she's taking her little problems to God. Wow!

Another moment passes.

Eleanor: I am God.

me, thinking to myself: oh, dear. So much for that.