Of all the traits Kate could have possibly inherited from me or from David, I wish she had his laid-back disposition. Instead, she seems to have my type-A, anxious, high-speed, obsessive nature. In recent days, she has been very emotional, crying at night and getting worked up over small things, such as the number of buttons on a sweater. It's really been mounting over the last few weeks but until now we had not made the connection between the many isolated incidents. Time to play Sherlock Holmes:

Clue 1: Kate cries at breakfast because her sweater has 5 buttons, and she likes the sweater that has only 4 buttons.
Clue 2: Kate asks me if the teacher in kindergarten will help her tie her shoes (and by the way, none of her shoes have shoelaces)
Clue 3: In tears, Kate repeatedly asks me to promise her that I will not forget to take clean blanket and sheets to school on Mondays. No amount of promising calms her down.
Clue 4: Kate declares that she hates her pre-school and can't wait for graduation.
Clue 5: Kate says she likes zippers because she can "zip" her sweatshirt very fast.
Clue 6: In school, Kate refuses to remove her sweater even though it's 75 degrees and sunny.
Clue 7: Kate tells me she will never ask for help at school.

Figured it out? We did, after an agonizing period of head-scratching. At first, we thought she was upset about having to leave preschool and go to kindergarten without any of her friends. It turns out, it has more to do with being at preschool. Apparently, the teachers have a checklist of developmental milestones that all children should hit before heading to kindergarten. They never shared the list with us parents, but they seem to have done so extensively with the kids. Kate, being obsessed with perfection, is freaked out because there are a couple of items she has not mastered. Among them - of course - working buttons and shoelaces. Our precious girl, instead of asking for help, simply tortured herself. The whole story is coming out slowly, but Kate believes that the teachers at her preschool will not help her, and kindergarten teachers will expect her to know everything already. At the age of 5, Kate is suffering real performance anxiety and feeling under qualified! Obviously, while pointing out her "deficiency" in button-management, nobody bothered to point out that she's been doing additions and subtractions for months, while the milestone for kindergarten is to identify numbers 1-20 (which she was doing over 2 years ago).:: Jade @ 12:00 PM

[ Monday, May 03, 2010 ]