Determined

The family has entered into the phase of determined thinking.  Things are not requested, or simply wanted, these days.  They are needed, mandatory, non-negotiable, and even traumatizing if denied.  It's been a tough transition for the family because Shea has always been somewhat mild in her personality, polite, malleable, even reasonable (if one can say such a thing for a child under 6). 

This new phase brings along all kinds of new family dynamics, many of which I thought I would avoid.  But, it is now the fifth year of her life and I find myself saying things like, "Because I said so," "If I hear one more word about it," and, even, "I'll give you something to cry about."  I've morphed into the universality of parenthood, I've become cliché, a sitcom dad of the worst variety, driven there by the insistent whims of a five year old.  Who knew this day would come?  Stop laughing, mom and dad.

The flip side of this determinism, this fixed mindset, is that Shea is beginning to drive herself, to want things so badly as to work for them.  I took Shea to a friend's pool a couple of weeks back for an afternoon of play.  She loves the water.  She's been taking swimming lessons for a couple of months now and she's getting pretty good.  At the friend's house, she didn't want to wear a life jacket in the pool.  Enter determined moment.

The pool has a shallow end, but Shea can only touch the bottom right near the stairs, so I'm not entirely comfortable with her swimming without some kind of flotation device.  She insists.  She swears she can swim.  I'm not buying.  Again, she insists.  Which leads us to this moment.

I'm amazed.  Shea has never swam that well before, but she wants to show me something, to prove herself, to move past the "no."  She's determined, self-confident, brave.  

It's then that I realized that sometimes I get in her way.  I'm not meaning to do it.  In fact, I mostly believe I should be doing it.  It is that portion of the parent that is alert to danger, aware of consequence, and wary of water.  But, and I remember this about my own childhood if I allow myself that deep reflection, there is nothing more frustrating to the child than that "no."  That doubtful expression of ability, that assessment that says you aren't ready.  Shea pushes back against that often.  I simply listened this time and that was the result I got.

This will be the struggle of a lifetime.  Her pushing, me wary and pushing back.  I don't think it will ever end, but I can try to be self-aware enough to let her try.  In the end, it will lead her further and to higher heights, until she is ready to take a greater leap.  Maybe even like this one:

Proud Dad

When I went to my mother's house to pick up Shea today, I discovered a street full of kids.  They love my mother, and they're warming up to me now as well.  The girls played in the garage with my mother and my daughter's Rapunzel doll.  The boys sat on the curb across the street with their motorized scooter, skateboard, and remote control car.

I parked in front of my mom's house and the kids all gathered.  Shea asked if she could get in the back of the truck with her little friend.  Without saying yes, I picked her up and swung her into the bed.  Her little friend "Amy" took her place at my feet without another word, and I swung her up as well.  Grabbing the loose bungee cord from the back of my truck, they pieced together a swing that would allow Rapunzel to descend from her high tower (they hooked the bungee cord to Shea's bicycle helmet).  The girls laughed and brought Rapunzel up and down.

Amy, a girl a little younger than Shea, climbed up and down from the bed of the truck multiple times in order to fetch the doll.  After a while, I stopped her from getting the doll and told Shea she had to climb up and down.  She looked at me, down to the ground, and back.  She gave me a brief look like, "Do I have to?"  But she walked to the back tailgate and swung her first leg over. 

This was the easy part.  When she went to bring the other leg over, her brace caught on the bedliner.  She struggled to get that other leg over the tailgate and it floundered for a moment behind her as she held on to the tailgate with both hands, staring down at what must seem like a big fall down to the concrete.  I helped her unhook the leg brace and she pulled the other leg over the top.

Shea had both her leg braces on and her hand brace.  The hand brace prevents her thumb from burying itself in her palm, but it makes her grip a little slippery.  Standing with both feet on the bumper, Shea whined for a moment that she might fall.  I stood behind her, my hands hovering near her ribs and promised her I wouldn't let that happen.  With her grip slipping due to her hand brace, she extended her left leg down from the bumper toward the ground.  I heard her whine for just a moment as she felt her grip slip, but then her foot was on the ground.  She paused, brought her other foot down, turned, and smiled up at me.

"I did it, Daddy."

"I knew you could," I said.

"That's it," my mother said and gave her a high five.  When we turned around again, Shea climbed back into the truck from the ground.  Then, back.  She did this for the rest of the time I stood talking to my mother in the driveway.  It may not seem like much, but when my daughter tries things that are outside of her comfort zone, that push her physical boundaries, even just a little bit, I swell with pride.

This is a normal parental reaction, I know, but I often spend time worrying about her adaptability to physical challenges.  She doesn't have an easy road like her mother and I did, and the reason I get scared sometimes is that I don't know what it means for her, what challenges she'll have to face, what form they will take.  So, when I see that she is willing to try, to push her boundaries, and to give it her all, then I know it doesn't matter.  I know that the form of the challenge won't matter because she is perfectly capable.  She is perfectly capable of dealing with her world, and I have one less reason to fret and worry.

She makes me proud.

Her attitude makes me proud.

And, most of all, I'm proud of her potential, because I see it in everything she does.