A Nice Surprise

One week ago, Sweet Pea couldn't stand. Two nights ago, she took 15 steps. All in a row. I've never had a child do this. She still can't really stand. She falls over within 5 seconds. How is this possible? All three other children stood for at least a month before walking.

I was also noticing last night when she was playing with Danyo (a neighbor boy), that she really can hold her own. He brought her a toy and she put it in her mouth. He got "giver's remorse" and tried to grab it back. She held on good and put up a fuss when he was trying to wrangle it from her.

Good. I like my kids to fight for what they want. (Don't remind me of this when they are teenagers.)

Last week, Nobody posted about some problems she'd been having with her child. I read the comments and noticed someone had posted something about a book called "Learned Optimism". I checked it out from the library. I took the test (of how optimistic you are) and then gave the test to Doe and then Boo.

I figured that Doe would be very optimistic and that I might have to do some interventions for Boo (you shouldn't give the test to children under 7). So, Doe took the test. He got a score of 12. The average for boys is a 5. The higher the score, the better. No surprise. He is the happiest, easiest going kid I know.

Boo took the test. She got a 10. Average for girls is a 7. So I started thinking. Maybe Boo is normal. Maybe 10 year old girls are sometimes emotional. Maybe they get frustrated with their parents sometimes. Maybe they think their little brothers are annoying. And maybe it's all normal and Boo is within the normal range. As I have mentioned before, my mom says my emotions were much more like a boy. I rarely remember getting emotional growing up. Maybe I was the odd one.

In any case, I am now breathing a little sigh of relief. I always get on Boo for being a "drama queen". Perhaps I am the drama queen- thinking that her behavior was abnormal. Oh well, at least when she's in counseling later in life because her mom always told her she was a drama queen, she'll be optimistic about it.