(no subject)

[kcobweb]

Tonight at dinner there were some high points and low points.

She gave us a great description of how she and her friend A pretended they were birds. A. was a blue jay and E. was a robin, and they flew around and ate things. The climber was their house. One of the teachers apparently pretended to put worms on their heads. For a child who will never tell me *anything*, this was a great glimpse - hey look! she has friends! hey look! she has an imagination! (She talks about A. all the time, but sometimes I wonder - she's so shy, and so I don't know how one-sided the friendship might be...... So it's nice to have some verification of stuff they do together.)

Then the cataclysm. We had quesadillas for dinner, and she asked for more tortilla chips. I said, "I'm sorry, they're all gone." She burst into tears and said - very clearly and loudly - "I'm very upset! I. Am. Not. Happy. With. You." Coming as I do from a family that is mostly incapable of expressing any strong emotions, I thought that was *fantastic*. Yeah, I don't want her yelling at me about tortilla chips, but the fact that she was able to come up with those words and say them, in the midst of all that anger she was feeling, was really powerful to me, and I was very proud of her. Look at my girl being all expressive!!!

Comments

[ellinor.livejournal.com]

I love that you find the cheer in Elena's self-expression!

:)

[ltlbird.livejournal.com]

Wow, you are truly a fantastic parent for being able to see the positive side of a fit. :) It's great that she's expressing herself, and doing so with words.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

This is definitely colored by the fact that I'm not sure I could say those words in anger, particularly not to my parents. :) So I feel like she's made progress past me and some of my emotional hang-ups.

[(Anonymous)]

Very cool. She's expressing her feelings so politely and accurately too! We used to get a lot of tears and "But I don't like it!", but lately it's been temper tantrums and "I don't like you anymore!" whenever Sammy is thwarted. (Actually, when she's really mad she doesn't like anything.) I should work on teaching her how to describe her feelings better- I've read that it does wonders for reducing temper tantrums.

[tea-dragon.livejournal.com]

Drat, that was me. Stupid new browser!

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

She's expressing her feelings so politely and accurately too!

It wasn't exactly polite, because she shouted that at me. But in my family, I would have gotten in trouble for yelling and the content would have been ignored - I wanted to ignore the mode and take note of the emotional expression. :)

Her pre-school teacher just told me that she's doing well at standing up for herself "No, I was playing with that toy; that's not nice!" I wonder if that is related.

[tea-dragon.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're teaching her to do that on purpose. Our preschool does, and so does Sarah's school (they call it "bully-proofing". It was so awesome to see Sarah, as a kindergartner, saying indignantly, "That's bullying behavior! I don't like that!" (Not that I think she'd stand for it anyway, but it's great that they're taught some good words to use :)

[ailbhe]

Oh, that's so great! It's so much easier when they can use words in times of stress.