My big little girl

Today was so different to yesterday as to make me wonder if someone has done a kind of reverse changeling operation on my daughter overnight.

It didn’t start well – I had a bad night with Small. He’s got this thing going that if he manages to wake up before I come to bed, and that’s wake up to the point where he gets out of bed and comes looking for me, he won’t then let go of me, and sleeps on my head. I don’t find this overly comfortable, so I don’t tend to get much sleep.

We were supposed to be going to do art with my artistic friend today, and we were supposed to be there this morning. I don’t quite know how or why, but it was 11.20 by the time we left the house, so it was rather nearer lunch time by the time we got there. I primed Big that we might not be able to stop as my friend had said she was busy this aft, and went to the door myself. No answer. Ring again. Still no answer. Hm.

Went back to the car, rang them on the mobile, straight to answerphone. Curiouser and curiouser. Told Big and she looked a bit sad, but in line with our earlier discussion, didn’t tantrum, burst into tears, tell me I was horrid or anything. Wow. Even after I tried the doorbell and rang them again to leave a message she was doing OK. So it was a real bonus when I looked in the mirror as I prepared to pull away and saw them coming down the road. Turned out M had completely forgotten our arrangement, popped out to see a friend and stopped for coffee, so just as well we hadn’t got there on time – we’d have missed her completely 😉

So we had lunch, then did drawing, more drawing, still life and painting. Big was an absolute star throughout, polite and thoughtful, tried everything asked of her, I was proud. And I said so. Many times.

Then we loaded up and popped off to see Kirsty and co and Big was incredibly well behaved all the time we were there. Marvellous. She didn’t make a fuss when I asked her to get ready so that we could go to her ballet class, and she didn’t make a fuss when it became apparent that the traffic was just too heavy and we weren’t going to make it there in time for the start of the lesson. I offered her the choice of going and arriving after the class had started or going home.

“I don’t mind missing my ballet”

“are you sure?”

“I’m sure that I don’t mind.”

“So you want to go home?”

“I don’t want to go home but I don’t mind missing my ballet.” Pedantic to the end. Can’t think where she gets it from. 😉

So how did I achieve this miraculous turnaround? Hm. Tim had a bit of a pep talk at some stage, and this morning I laid it on the line – behave the way you did yesterday and we come home, we don’t do the fun things. I can’t take you to ppl’s houses if you are going to run wild, I won’t take you to ballet if you are going to treat me badly. So she decided to be grownup, and although she had to check with me once or twice what the grown up thing to do was, she managed admirably all day. Wasn’t that surprised that she had to be very loud and splashy and irresponsible in the bath though!

I don’t particularly like this approach. I don’t want her to be grownup, she isn’t grown up, she isn’t even 5 yet. But if she can cope with behaving in a more reasonable manner by deciding to be grown up every now and then, then that’s what we’ll do.