Progress Report

I’m happy to report that my younger daughter is branching out.

As you may remember, her good-byes were wearing me out, and her wariness around anyone that doesn’t live in our home was weighing me down.

So I made a plan and I tried to keep it simple.

First and foremost, pay attention to her. Sounds easy enough, but in this house, and at this age, she became easy to over look.

All the new accomplishments of our older daughter were taking up a lot of space (“She’s reading chapter books! She’s starting 1st grade!”). Not to mention those of our son (“Honey, did you hear him say “car” when he picked up my keys!??! He’s such a genius!”).

She was truly lost in the middle. She has a vast vocabulary already, and she has been at the same preschool for the past almost two years. Not too much new going on there.

So I started really watching her. I showered her with love and attention. I spent a little one-on-one time with her working on things like learning the letters of the alphabet, completing puzzles, playing computer games or building neighborhoods out of blocks.

And I congratulated her every new, and old, accomplishment. I supported and encouraged her in the face of each challenge. In short, I concentrated less on the end result and more on the process.

Again, sounds easy, I know. But with so many other things going on in the house, it was even easier for this kind of attention to fall by the wayside for a while.

We also set up some play dates for her, no big sisters allowed. I put up a sticker/reward chart for her “good good-byes” as we liked to call them. And not to be overlooked, a special shout out goes to my husband, who started taking her to school more, which helped set her up for success with a better ‘mommy good-bye’ at home.

And then it happened. She started to blossom.

At first I thought maybe I was just imagining it. But then I realized she really was growing. Her spirit was getting bigger and stronger, and her sense of pride in herself was becoming almost visible, shining right through those beautiful eyes of hers.

I even caught her one time the other day trying to do something while muttering “you can do it, you can do it” over and over again.

Then yesterday, upon picking her up from school, her teacher told me that she played with all the other girls in her class all day. She said she was running around with them laughing and having a grand old time. And then her teacher said “and she’ll even say good-bye to me, right?” and on cue, my daughter did just that, instead of burying her head into me and playing shy upon leaving like usual.

Today I saw her teacher from last year who had a similar report. “She’s really out there playing with everyone!” she said. “I knew she had it in her. Don’t you worry about that one, she’s a loud one when she wants to be,” she informed me.

Indeed she is.

Look out world, here she comes.