How I most recently failed our daughter

Dudelet, little elf’s brother, is eight and clever. Clever as in very clever, very academic but not at the extreme end of the scale. He learns easily (perhaps a bit too easily), has developed a ridiculous vocabulary for his age (I treasure the memory of his grandfather’s face when dudelet, at two and a half, gravely explained “…and this is a meditation stool”) and is one of the small group in his class who are sat together and given extra homework to “stretch them.” He’s also a bit moody, hyperactive, spends too much time on iPods, computers and GameCubes if given the change, and wakes up at 5am daily to read Michelle Paver. I can’t remember a time when he hasn’t clearly and cleanly distinguished between fantasy and make-believe. Most younger children walk a liminal line between the two if, at times, a slightly knowing one. For dudelet, his toys have always been toys from the moment he found words to express the concept (when he was nearly three). Imaginative play has always been story telling with a layer of ironic distance rather than projection. I sometimes feel he’s missed out.

Little elf, in contrast, rapidly acquired imaginary friends – in fact a whole imaginary family. She went through a phase of putting her babies everywhere and heaven help you if you sat on them. This was tricky because her babies were tiny and invisible. Her bedroom is full of monsters and fairies. Her toys talk and need their hair washed. Sometimes, they speak for her or she speaks for them (and therefore, for herself). Dudelet taught himself to tell the time and use a computer. Little elf has zero sense of time and seemingly no interest in acquiring one. She loves pink, dresses, ballet – a long list of normative little girl things.

Recently, we went to a parents evening. Little elf’s teachers and the classroom assistant sat behind the desk and beamed at her. Then dudelet took her off to play so we could have a conversation. We were in for a shock. Little elf was a bit disruptive. She didn’t want to play with others when she was supposed to. She’d only join in activities in her good time. She was cheeky. She threw things. She’d hide or pretend to be invisible.

Supermum and I looked at each other, baffled. We hadn’t expected this. Our four year throws the occasional (okay, regular) major strop but she’s usually…Well, there’s the drawing on the wall, the room demolition, the eating tantrums, kicking her brother, cheekiness…But she’s so funny…How could anyone…?

“Don’t get me wrong,” the teacher said. “we do love her. But she can be a proper little madam if she doesn’t get her own way.”

“But…” we chorused, trying to explain that we just didn’t recognise the portrait of a charming, manipulative little harridan that had just been painted for us.

The teacher scanned us both. She knows little elf’s brother who’s also got something of a reputation as a character at his school.

“She really is very clever, you know,” she said.

I confess, I think we both said “What?”

“Really smart – she’s a very intelligent little girl. She’s knows just what she’s doing.”

After which, the teacher went on to outline a strategy for managing her behaviour which has so far worked reasonably well. Meanwhile, we went away reeling. Little elf is clever. Why had we never noticed?

It isn’t that we don’t think she’s clever so much as dudelet has so thoroughly occupied the ‘clever’ slot in the family. Little elf had taken up the ‘charming, mischievous, cute” slot (and the speech issue probably doesn’t help).

How could I have let her down like that? How could I have allowed this to happen? And how typical! The ‘clever’ boy, the ‘charming’ girl! I’m so thoroughly ashamed of myself.

So I’m trying to monitor my behaviour, to look for ways in which I’m failing to actively empower her intellectually and (contrariwise) to be attentive to how I’m pushing dudelet into an altogether different stereotype. The other thing, of course, is to be aware that all stereotypes aside, they may well be expressing perfectly valid sides of their characters and identities to date. Who’s to say? It’s an ongoing project, parenting, and we can’t deny that she’s already equaling her older brother in sheer emotional intelligence. And, lastly, it could be argued that the fault isn’t that I’ve noticed she’s clever but that I put too high a default value on conventional evidences of intelligence. Little elf spins astonishing stories of giants and pirates and princesses and monsters who are invariably cut into little pieces. Dudelet likes to do sums, draw comics and invent sushi processing machines.

That’s enough navel-gazing – you get the picture. But, I’m still stunned by our failure to at least question the stereotypes we were setting up. Sigh.

Must try harder.

“I don’t like the way I talk” – self esteem and our four year old

Little elf and I have been dancing to the new Sharon Van Etten. Suddenly, she stops and says “I don’t like my hair.”

This isn’t unusual. She seriously resents how her hair stubbornly refuses to grow as fast as her longer haired friends. It doesn’t help that she’s obsessed with Tangled and that her idea of long hair is proportionally unrealistic. Yesterday, I caught her quietly cutting chunks off it – luckily she’d only managed a couple – on the grounds that it would “help it grow faster.”

Then she said “I don’t like the front of it.”

Then “I want it down my back and it isn’t.”

Then it took a turn for the worse.

“I don’t like to look at myself in the mirror…

“I don’t want anyone ever to recognise me… “

By now, she was curled up in my lap and getting teary. I tell her that she’s beautiful and clever and that hair grows slowly and that she has to be patient – and how much more hair she has than me in any case. But then we reach the heart of it.

“I don’t like my voice – everyone think’s its funny…

“All the grown-ups think my voice is funny. Everyone else’s voices aren’t funny but mine is.”

Ah. Little elf has a speech impediment, or rather, her speech is developing more slowly than it should do. It’s reached the point where her school have referred her to a speech therapist who’s given us some flash cards to work with and assured us that it’ll probably sort itself out. Basically, there are sounds that should be at the back of her throat that she enunciates from the front and vice versa. I had a similar problem which led to years of torture in elocution classes.

There are days when she speaks quite well and other days when we can hardly understand a word she says which for a bright, chatty, talkative little four year old girl must be a nightmare. And she does talk – her teachers tell us that she’s clever and sociable – but that she’s also wilful, mischievous and inclined to only do the things that she wants to do. Is there a correlation of some kind?

She talks some more and nestles into my arms then suddenly jumps up and asks to watch Whatnots. It’s like a switch has flipped.

I don’t think there’s a self-image problem so much as a self-esteem problem brewing and its all to do with her talking. But later on, she and dudelet put on a bit of a performance and little elf tells us three long and incomprehensibly complex stories about “Fahder Cwissmass” and his body parts (I don’t think you want to know). We all applaud enthusiastically. Thankfully, her dudelet (who’s eight) understands that of the things he chooses to tease her about, her speech is off limits.

There isn’t an easy answer to this one – her nursery teachers work hard with her and are very supportive and we – the three of us – do what we can to provide the most nurturing environment we can manage. I just hope it sorts itself out before more structured intervention becomes necessary.

School, Little Elf, Change

Always different and always the same.

Four years ago, I had a turn at delivering dudelet to nursery. Supermum had actually taken him to his first day so by the time I walked him to school he’d already been ‘socialised’ into the norms of the nursery experience. Back then, parents could lead their children right into the large, awkwardly-shaped open-plan space with its 19th century hall.  Dudelet held on to my hand and showed me the hamster, the place where he put his bag, the sand tray and the funny-things-hanging-from-the-ceiling until the teacher clapped her hands and he toddled off obediently to sit on the carpet with his nearly-four-year old peers. He still sneaked me a quick “look-at-me” wave, though and a wide-eyed grin, amazed to be sitting there in the midst of a newly independent, mysterious world, at once circumscribed and vast.

I went outside, overwhelmed by the sense of gateways opening and closing and, to be honest, my own memories of more than forty years previously. It wasn’t the scent or taste of a madeline so much as the high angle of the ceiling and the low sticky-back plastic covered tables and…and…

Well, I cried a bit.

Little elf was different. Supermum and I took her together for her first day after we’d persuaded to put some clothes on (she’s very prone to naked protests). First we dropped dudelet off at the ‘big’ playground with the other Year Threes then  headed across the school to the nursery classrooms. Little elf showed me her hook with her name on but (different building, new head teacher, change in policy) I had to stop at the classroom door and watch her scamper off to join the other children on the assembly mat. She was already chatting and didn’t even look at me.

Earlier, she’d shared a few anxieties, mostly about lunch.

“I won’t be able to eat.”

“You’ll be able to choose something you like.”

“But how will they know?”

“You can tell them what you want to eat.”

“But what if I can’t tell them?”

“You can point.”

“BUT I CAN’T POINT!”

This time, I didn’t cry. I don’t know why. Perhaps we suspect there’s something more resilient about our daughter? Or perhaps we’ve just grown thicker skins? There are so many transitions, so may never-to-be-turned-back motions of the clock and we can’t cry about them all. There aren’t enough tears in the world.