Miss Independent

At Fairytale town the other day I saw a little girl of about 3 being helped to do everything by her brother who was maybe 4 or 5. He helped her climb stairs onto the climbers, held her hand, guided her up, etc. I was watching Cianna do those same things by herself and overheard the other mom say her daughter liked to be helped with everything. I figured she must be the baby in the family.

Then I got in the car with my kids. Cianna wanted a snack. I got out a mandarin orange. "Do you want me to peel it or do you want to do it yourself?", I asked. "My do it." And then, as she began to peel it "mommy! Peel!". I gave her a cup to put the peels in. Then I gave her a second orange. "Can you peel them both and share some with Nathan?". "Yeah." I know that Nathan needs to work on peeling his own orange, but I also figured that if I handed him an orange and then started driving he'd bite into the peel, get frustrated, and make a mess. He needs to practice, but this wasn't the time to supervise the process.  And the task kept Cianna quietly busy for several miles of the drive home. So quiet in fact that I tuned out and had no idea whether she did indeed share. I asked her "did you share with Nathan?" And she said "yeah".  I didn't hear any complaints and he does like oranges, so we'll assume it's true.

 The whole scenario made me reflect a little on the difference between being the baby of that other family and being the baby in mine.  I know part of it is personality, Cianna is just an independent girl, but there is also a difference in mom's expectations and in reinforcement for a pattern if behavior. That other little girl behaves in a more dependent way and it is reinforced with attention and help. If Miss Cianna tried that with Nathan it wouldn't get her real far. That's not to say she doesn't know how to get anything out of her brother, though! She's pretty good at pitching a fit in the backseat until he hands over his toy or his juice to pacify her. But Nathan hasn't yet mastered the concept of helping others for intrinsic reward. Heck, he prefers to let others help him and will often wait for them to do so rather than taking the initiative. Cianna is all about initiative and independence. And, when she wants to, she's into helping others. I know that I often have pretty high expectations of my not-yet-2-year-old and that oftentimes she lives up to (or exceeds!) those expectations, and that some of that expectation comes from my being impressed with her ability to understand and follow directions as compared to her brother. It's interesting to me to see that interaction between who she is and the family dynamics.

And of course for me to look at my role in shaping this, whether I'm conscious of it at the time or not.

I'm going to end this with some pics of the kids taken that day at Fairytale town. Nathan was really into watching all the other kids, he's gotten really excited about kids although he often tends to be an observer. Still, I think that developing an interest is a place to start with forming peer relationships and I'm hopeful that when we start new behavioral services in January for autism they can help us address this need.