This little girl is becoming a Big Girl this summer. Olivia recently moved up to the Four Year Old Room at school. She has had a very good friend move to another town. And she has had to share more time with more active siblings. This hasn't been easy for her, but I think I see her working on it every day, finding ways to calm herself down, to wait a little bit to be heard, to find something else to do until we have more time for her. Sometimes this is when we're reading books before bed, and she will hold questions until then. Not that she refrains from asking volumes of questions all the time, but the quieter times are when she asks her more important questions. She is a little worried about what Sunday School will be like. She tells us that she misses Graham. She will ask about what certain comments mean that she may have heard adults talk about during the day. I'm very proud of her for all of this: her patience, and her considered thoughts.
She is also defending her right to wear what she wants. This is probably her main means of controlling her environment or schedule right now, so she maintains this with a strong voice and sense of justice. She angles for McDonald's on the drive home from school and, when told she should use her own "stars" money for special meals like that, she gets angry with the injustice as well: "No, I don't have to buy food! Grownups are supposed to buy the food! I don't have to do that!" The stars money is a reinforcing of good behavior we have been trying for months to help inspire her in the mornings, and which has been very beneficial when we happen to be shopping: we can tell her that she should save her stars money to buy the item she happens to see and ask us for in a department store. She is surprisingly good at deferring gratification and I can't tell her often enough how proud i am of her for this, mostly because she doesn't understand yet that this is pretty difficult and that i can appreciate how difficult it must be for her.
Like i said, lots going on for Olivia right now, and I'm very proud of her for so many reasons.
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