I think of Halloween as an annual test on how truly "naturalized" we have become in our status as American citizens. I've gone from detesting the holiday through feeling amused by it to almost loving it now that I have two kids who really get in the spirit of it. I'd lie if I said that I look forward to dressing up myself, but I surely couldn't wait to see the two rascals in their costumes.
While you might think, judging from the photo below of them taking stock of their loot, that these kids love candy, Sava still can't stomach more than four M&Ms without declaring that he is full. Raya, on the other hand, had her first taste of 1) lollipop 2) M&Ms 3) Crunch this week, and each time screamed bloody murder because she was given only a single "serving" of each. Sister loves her sweets.
One of my students chastised me for not dressing up when I went trick-or-treating with the kids, saying that this was always the highlight of her holiday, and I take her reprimand to heart. Next year, I promise, I will claim my full right to citizenship by becoming the mother who dresses up along with her kids for Halloween.
:::
I thought I had a million things to write this week, as we had a rough awakening with Raya's refusal to accept preschool, and her sudden, intense bouts of separation anxiety threw us for a loop, but much of it doesn't feel fully digested yet. Raya is out of preschool, and we are considering alternatives. She did not seem to find in the classroom an institutional equivalent for the intense emotional bond that she demands from all of us at home, and we decided to give her one more year to join the big wide world of school.
I feel sad for not recognizing earlier that, although temperamentally opposed to Sava, she demands just as much emotional closeness as he did, and becomes just as fragile when that attachment, for whatever reason, is not there.
It shocked us to see this happy, gregarious, verbal child bawl with profound distress upon being left in a place where she clearly didn't feel comfortable, and we acted on instinct when we took her out. We'll probably never know whether this instinct was misdirected, and we can find comfort only in the desire to do right.
This week gave ultimate confirmation to my growing suspicion that nothing about kids is predictable, and that assuming anything about their personality is always bound to humble us. Now that the suspicion is a full-blown awareness, it seems only right that we should learn to accept our choices and trust our guts even while recognizing that guts, too, make mistakes.
We have no doubt that Raya will find her place in the world eventually, and we'd like to help her do that at her own pace, following her instincts of attachment.
Her lovely brother serves as a daily reminder to us that kids do adapt eventually, and that sometimes taking it slowly is just how it's meant to be.
He is the kid who during most of his third year of life would not let me out of his sight for longer than thirty seconds, and he is the same kid who now cries in the morning if we tell him that he is spending a half instead of a full day at school.
He may not be a social butterfly, but he loves and respects friendship better than most adults I know, and his teachers love him for his sweet disposition, which of course makes him into the ideal student.
He has largely taught us how to raise him, and now often teaches us how to raise Raya also.
Happy hump day out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment