Learning from Lucy

About once every two weeks, Lucy comes home from preschool in a grouchy mood. She argues with me at every turn and sometimes works herself up into a dramatic tantrum over something trivial. Usually this foul temper means that she is tired, and sometimes I can get her to fall asleep if we drive in the car for more than fifteen minutes. Such was the case after our grumpy episode this afternoon: Lucy fell asleep on the way to Sam's fencing lesson, and while Sam attended class I sat in the parking lot for an hour with a sleeping Bubba in her carseat. Looking back, I really value that I had some quiet time to reflect, since Lucy and I had three arguments today (morning, afternoon and evening) and I regret the way I handled each situation. Sam never talks back to his parents, so I haven't had to deal with this situation before. I'm still learning how to respond to a strong-willed child that challenges seemingly everything I ask or do. But I want to nip this talky-back, toddler-sized sassy attitude in the bud now, so Lucy learns that behavior is not acceptable. I want her to be a gracious, kind person. And I want to feel like a gracious and kind person, which has been trying as of late. I suppose that we both need to work on developing this same skill.

Lucy can be very sweet and good-natured, and she definitely has a keen awareness of what is right and wrong. After school she likes to report to me which kids followed the rules, and which ones did not. She loves her friends at school and has been planning her 5th birthday party for months and months. She has moved out of her lip syncing phase, and instead, as she gets older, I can tell that she and I are similar in our love of singing. My mom told me once that she could always tell how I was feeling, based on the song that I chose to sing at the piano. Lucy is the same kind of way: she likes to burst into songs that she has made up, and often they relate to how she is feeling or what she is doing. Her face is an open book and it is easy to tell how she feels, based on the expression of her eyes or the turned up (or down!) line of her mouth.

Over the past few days she has been wanting to "wear her hair down," which really means that the front locks usually fall down in front of her face. She cares a lot about having people notice things about her (another way that she is an opposite of Sam), and she was convinced that her friends at school would notice if she wore her hair in this different way. So today, I let her wear her hair down, although it was tucked a little back behind a headband. Lucy also didn't want me to wet down her curls or put gel in them, because she didn't want her hair to look "too dark" when it gets wet. So, instead, I brushed the tangles out of her hair and we left it in a poofy mass of frizz in the back, because that is what she wanted. And as soon as we walked in the door, Lucy's classmate Harper came up to me and asked, "What did you do to Lucy's hair today?" And I replied that Lucy had wanted to wear a new hairstyle. Harper said, "Oh! I like it," and Lucy just glowed. Her ploy to have a new hairdo that would be noticed worked. And, seeing her with that big smile on her face made me realize that maybe I need to relinquish some (all?) control over what Lucy wears or how she styles her hair.

I love this girl, even when it is hard. And I hope that she and I both become better people through our mother-daughter relationship. We have a lot to learn from each other.