Day 78 on Lexapro.
Day 56 on Lamictal.
posted much, much later…
This day, when I went to pick Em up from school, I was happy. She was happy. She was doing so well. I couldn’t believe the turnaround that had occurred since she first started. Her teacher had told me she is very smart. That her pencil work is impressive. That she now had tons of friends of all ages. And that she had even acquired a boyfriend.
Life was good.
But wait.
As I searched the playground looking for Em, her teacher approached me.
He was all worked up. Not in a bad way. Just in an energetic way.
“Ma,” he started. “She’s doing real good. Don’t get me wrong. She’s doing a great job. Her handwriting skills are impressive. She knew how to hold a pencil without anybody showing her.”
“Okay,” I said tentatively, waiting for the ”but.”
And, of course, it came.
“But, she doesn’t know how to color.”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
“She doesn’t know how to color?”
“No, and she’s getting behind on her work because of it. She just wants to color over and over the same spot. She doesn’t finish what she’s supposed to be doing. I told her she couldn’t play if she didn’t finish, so she said okay. She just sat and looked at her book while everybody else had fun.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to work on coloring with her.”
“I definitely will. I’ll start tonight.”
“Does she not have any coloring books?”
“Well, she does. But I guess she just likes to draw.”
“Oh, she can definitely draw.”
“Yes, that is something she can definitely do,” I agreed.
That evening, on the way home, I broached the subject carefully.
“Em, we are ging to do something really fun tonight.”
“What’s that?” She asked form her carseat.
“Well, we are going to work on your coloring.”
I knew I had to be careful with the suggestion, as she will sometimes shut down at the idea of me working on anything with her. It seems like she takes the admission of not knowing things as an affront to her character. Perhaps she is a person who is under the impression that she should already know everything. Perhaps it hurts her when she doesn’t. Maybe that is why she seems to become embarassed when she doesn’t know the answer.
Maybe that is why she starts to act silly instead.
Her mother is like that.
I am like that.
But this night, she didn’t seem to mind the idea at all.
And so, after I got dinner started, we sat down to color. She had a book. I had a book. And I watched her as she deliberately covered over and over in the same spot.
“Good job, Em!” I told her. “That looks really great! Now color the rest.”
“I am coloring.”
“But color the rest. Fill it in. Don’t leave any white spots.”
And then she did. She really did. She filled everything in beautifully without hardly leaving the lines.
Is that all it took, I wondered?
As I watched and encouraged her, delighting over each small improvement, I decided to tell her one more thing.
“You know, Em,” I started. “You don’t have to know everything at first. Nobody knows everything at first. That’s why we learn. It’s okay to not be good at something and practice and practice until you get better. We all have to do that sometimes.”
And even though she is only four, she seemed relieved when I told her that. Sometimes I forget to tell her the most simple things because I assume she already knows. But at that moment, I knew she hadn’t known this. For years, I hadn’t known it, either.
Though it would have made a world of difference if I had.
1 Comment(s)
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
What a difference those few words would have made for all of us. Good job Em!! And great job Mom!