Nally woke up in them middle of the night because of jetlag and looked for her homework.
i looked at her this morning and thought -- look how much you’re grown baby girl.
All the years of struggling in kindergarten and first grade paid off, you are finally self-disciplined. It moves me especially with her. Since i know unlike her brother who is a focussed, goal oriented bullet, this process hasn’t come easy.
It has taken hours of dropped pencils, ripped slices of donuts, clocked in hours at Starbucks, on purple plush arm chairs, me insulated with 4.5 years of Psych reading to keep me properly distanced and prevented from killing her every second she gets distracted by a change in air pressure.
Today, she can finish pages of chinese, a language she hates and is counting the years till middle school where she doesn’t have to do it anymore. Today, she can take the total number of homework pages divided by 4 and find out what she needs to do per day.
More than that, she has accomplished what i feared she would never do ( Which her father is still trying to master ) -- learning to do what she does not like doing.
Yesterday i heard her banging on the piano for a good 30 mins. No small feat for someone who runs to her bedroom crying every time i ask for a replay. It’s been a practice for me to not meddle, take 50 steps back and take my anxieties to my therapist.
But almost 9, she is just beautiful. Grown up and poised. Learning how to “handle” her brother. i watch her talk him down from escalated mood swings, distract him from full blown tantrums, and i think “ Girl, even if you don’t end up a therapist, you have more skills and knowledge about how to handle your brother and men than i ever had your age”.
But she has always been an old soul. Bonding with adults as a baby more than her peers. Her brother rambles on and on about the private lives of his classmates. She misses her CLUBBED camp leader Albert and writes to him.
Everyone says i got my hands full for the teen years, but for now, she loves and respects me. And somehow her affection is worth its weight in gold.
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