Addendum
Last week, Dutch watched a movie for her weekend screen time. (Shirley Temple. Again.) I told her she needed some exercise afterward, and she suggested that she could walk around the block. Okay, I said. By myself? she said. Okay, I said. She seemed somewhat anxious about the possibility that the door might be locked when she got home, so I sat out on the porch and waited for her.
We reviewed the rules. Don't cross any streets. Don't dawdle too much. I feigned casualness, because I WANT to be a cool, non-helicopter mom. I'm perfectly aware that the odds of anything bad happening to a large child clad in bright pink, walking around a Portland neighborhood for ten minutes on a rainy Sunday afternoon, are extremely low, but actually I'm not that cool. I felt a little uneasy, casting her little ship off into the big, deep ocean. However, I wanted her to feel that this was not that big of a deal. She's FIVE, after all, practically grown-up. She's also very responsible and thoughtful, for her age, and she's had traffic safety rules (and a healthy wariness for cars) drummed into her pretty thoroughly. So there was no reason for her not to take this tiny step toward independence, and she was pretty excited about it.
I stood on the porch and watched for her to reappear (keeping an eye on the guy leisurely biking down the street in the rain with a sixpack of beer dangling from his handlebars), and as soon as I saw her pink-hooded head bobbing along over the fence at the end of the street, I hastily flopped back onto my chair, and looked thoughtfully across the street, trying to look as if I was so confident in Dutch's competence that I didn't even have to look out for her and thus was easily distracted by pondering whether or not the neighbors are still selling meth. When Dutch came in the front gate, she was grinning, extremely proud of herself. She told me that she had kept up a brisk pace because she started to get worried that people might call the police and get me put in jail for letting her walk around the block alone. SHE was worried about ME.
Today she picked out an outfit of purple jeans and a blue turtleneck. And a belt. She explained that big kids wear jeans. Big kids wear turtlenecks. Big kids wear belts. She's noticed that the other kids wear blue jeans,* and she would like to get some blue jeans. (This from a kid who's refused to wear pants without a stretchy waistband for her entire 5.5 years of life, because she doesn't like having her belly confined.) She is very proud of being able to work the button and zipper on her purple jeans. Later in the day, she came into the kitchen where I was washing dishes, and she was crying; she had been unable to re-button her pants after going to the bathroom. She wailed "I'm a LITTLE KID!"
While it feels to me that time is passing astonishingly quickly, for Dutch it's dragging along far behind the pace she'd like to see. The beautiful future, in which she will easily fasten her own pants, help herself to as much dessert as she wants, and dash off on her own to enjoy all sorts of unimaginable big-kid/adult delights, feels frustratingly far out of her reach.
*She also announced last week that she's noticed that the other kids her age at the daycare don't wear dresses very often, and she's not going to wear dresses very often any more. While I'm VERY glad that the dresses-only period is over, I feel a little sad that it was peer pressure that ended it.
We reviewed the rules. Don't cross any streets. Don't dawdle too much. I feigned casualness, because I WANT to be a cool, non-helicopter mom. I'm perfectly aware that the odds of anything bad happening to a large child clad in bright pink, walking around a Portland neighborhood for ten minutes on a rainy Sunday afternoon, are extremely low, but actually I'm not that cool. I felt a little uneasy, casting her little ship off into the big, deep ocean. However, I wanted her to feel that this was not that big of a deal. She's FIVE, after all, practically grown-up. She's also very responsible and thoughtful, for her age, and she's had traffic safety rules (and a healthy wariness for cars) drummed into her pretty thoroughly. So there was no reason for her not to take this tiny step toward independence, and she was pretty excited about it.
I stood on the porch and watched for her to reappear (keeping an eye on the guy leisurely biking down the street in the rain with a sixpack of beer dangling from his handlebars), and as soon as I saw her pink-hooded head bobbing along over the fence at the end of the street, I hastily flopped back onto my chair, and looked thoughtfully across the street, trying to look as if I was so confident in Dutch's competence that I didn't even have to look out for her and thus was easily distracted by pondering whether or not the neighbors are still selling meth. When Dutch came in the front gate, she was grinning, extremely proud of herself. She told me that she had kept up a brisk pace because she started to get worried that people might call the police and get me put in jail for letting her walk around the block alone. SHE was worried about ME.
Today she picked out an outfit of purple jeans and a blue turtleneck. And a belt. She explained that big kids wear jeans. Big kids wear turtlenecks. Big kids wear belts. She's noticed that the other kids wear blue jeans,* and she would like to get some blue jeans. (This from a kid who's refused to wear pants without a stretchy waistband for her entire 5.5 years of life, because she doesn't like having her belly confined.) She is very proud of being able to work the button and zipper on her purple jeans. Later in the day, she came into the kitchen where I was washing dishes, and she was crying; she had been unable to re-button her pants after going to the bathroom. She wailed "I'm a LITTLE KID!"
While it feels to me that time is passing astonishingly quickly, for Dutch it's dragging along far behind the pace she'd like to see. The beautiful future, in which she will easily fasten her own pants, help herself to as much dessert as she wants, and dash off on her own to enjoy all sorts of unimaginable big-kid/adult delights, feels frustratingly far out of her reach.
*She also announced last week that she's noticed that the other kids her age at the daycare don't wear dresses very often, and she's not going to wear dresses very often any more. While I'm VERY glad that the dresses-only period is over, I feel a little sad that it was peer pressure that ended it.
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