Our family recently returned from a visit to our former home in Southern California for New Year’s. While there we were fortunate to meet up at a favorite park with one of our oldest family-friends, people we’ve enjoyed countless play dates with over the years. Like our family, they have one ten-year-old daughter now on the verge of young-womanhood, quiet, thoughtful and relatively easy to live with. And like our family, they have a younger daughter who balances things by being more demanding, energetic, and prescient in her thinking. In other words, our older girls love thinking about the stars, our younger girls are eager to travel to them, and why can’t they go today?
We both moved away from LA last summer and had a lot to catch up on. Their big news: the six-year-old in their family has been diagnosed by several experts as having some sort of disorder (jury’s still out on which). She’s distractible, she can’t sit still, she’s just simply too much work. You know this type of child, they are often very active boys with very inquisitive minds. It’s easy to imagine them rocking the world with their amazing thoughts and ideas. It’s getting them safely to adulthood that’s the challenge.
So my pal, the mom, is always an inspiration. She’s the mom who took her kids to karate, fell in love with it, and is now about to test for her black belt in preparation for opening her own dojo. Of course I was a bit terrified to hear that my precious friend, her youngest, had been labeled as in need of all sorts of remedial action, including drugs.
My friend said this, as our four little girls built sandcastles in the shade of a pretty LA day: “I think the person who has the best perspective is the director of her school.” This school being a Montessori in Oklahoma City. “She said we owe our children three things: Beauty, Structure, and Communication. That’s it. If we’ve provided that much, we’ve done our job and the rest is beyond our control.”
The upshot is, no drugs. No rush to hysterical conclusions about a six-year-old girl who likes to wake up and read books to herself at five a.m. and doesn’t fall asleep until 10:30 p.m. She might be in trouble, but, she might just be a challenge. No one said this was going to be easy.
Her life is full of beauty, including the many museums and scenic vistas of Oklahoma City (who knew? But it’s true. Oklahoma is gorgeous). She lives a daily routine that allows for her extra energy, but doesn’t let her disrupt the family. And her mother lets her know, often, that she is loved, that she is special, and that the task of raising her is not too great for her family to handle.
I think the kid is going to be okay. Lucky, as would any of us be if we had Beauty, Structure, and Communication every day with the ones we love. And also to have a mom who realizes that no matter what the diagnosis, and there may be new ones in the future, her commitment to her little girl remains steady and constant, no matter what direction all that energy might pull them.
Posted on January 10th, 2006 by MomStar
Filed under: Uncategorized, Guilt and Getting Over It
Thanks for this. You said it powerfully and well.
Suzanne