It’s so hard.
Every day, I see this little sponge covered in blonde hair and blue eyes and applesauce, and I have to stop myself from going with what my guts speak. To silence them, cognisant that if I just pushed a little harder, or quizzed a little more, or held my hand over hers, then maybe she’d be further ahead.
I tell myself to shut up for the simple reason that I would never tell her that she should or will be a doctor, just because she cares so deeply about people’s welfare, hurts and heartaches: because it’s not up to me to push her as far as I can in any arena. Because I don’t want to predetermine her outcome.
I love that she’s in love with letters and words. Could I ensure that she was reading before preschool ended by focusing wholly on it? Maybe. She’s part-way there, already. But I have to pause, every time it occurs to me to intentionally teach her a new word. I have to let her come to me.
All of this constant abeyance doesn’t diminish my want to get her ahead. Or to get her to where the other kids in her preschool class might be.
I walk past those damn display boards outside of the classroom, with all of their crayoned normality, and I see all of the faces those four year olds are drawing. I hear her best friend count up to 49 and then ask what comes next.
I have watched her go from no numbers to plateauing at 14, and knowing 16 and 18 and 19 follow, but not which is first, or what’s between them, or that there is anything between at all. I refuse to pick up the art and ask her what it is, because I see how that might make art have to be about making a picture of something, instead of just creating. So she scribbles and I see how she takes up no more than 1/10th of each page, and often chooses to work in black. Heaven forbid a child psychologist ever see this work.
I refuse to make her practice counting, but I count out loud a lot, too, because she asks me to. I don’t tell her what numbers are without asking her what she might think, just in case she’s tricking me into thinking she doesn’t know them – this frustrates her but it doesn’t insult her.
I still have to cease comparing, because even if it wasn’t like putting dragonfruit up against every other form of produce, she’s three and I’m slotting her development with kids who will be turning five this year. With children who have had the benefit of a parent at home, 100% devoted to them and their learning potential. Kids who’ve been in art, gymnastics, ballet, swim, music and sign language classes. With kids who live with two parents, and have grandparents they see regularly, who don’t have dads who look at the clock on a bad day while counting down to when their next drink could be, and all of the other forms of nuclear our family detonates. Children who didn’t spend the first two years of their lives mainly in the throws of some sort of tantrum or sickness, or with a mother who was doing the same.
If it isn’t comparing, it’s about seeing genius in some facets of her. And that has to end, too.
If I really went for it, sure, I might make her be able to read before her 4th birthday. But what would it cost her? All of the lessons, the quizzes, the performing, and the expectation… would it help her to remain a lover of books, or would she grow to see them as work and unsatisfying, very quickly?
So, another day goes by where I reserve the jerk to list easy words on our white board, thinking I can teach them to her. I don’t sit down with paper and crayons, saying, “Here’s where the eyes go… and now, a nose…” I won’t pull out flash cards and try to fool her into thinking that rote memorization of digits is a game, simply because I worry that she won’t be the smartest motherfucker around.
And it’s so hard. Because now, now that schooling has been decided, it feels like a project. And if there’s anything I like better than the imagery of Jason Mraz naked, it’s a new project.
