The other day a friend remarked that the results of her son's kindergarten evaluation had been somewhat surprising: he had tested unexpectedly well in certain areas and not as well in the areas she had assumed were his strengths. Somewhat similarly, another friend has recently been taken aback by her creative son's intense interest in football (instead of community theatre). Of course, evaluations are frequently wrong, and football might just be a phase, after all. But isn't it true that sometimes our children aren't the way we think they are? Or that they may become something we didn't expect?
My mom regularly reminds me of this. She should know. According to her, I was a very active baby: crawling at five months, demanding to be outside, refusing to cuddle. I was never one to just sit around sucking my toes. Things got even worse when I was old enough to be dropped off in nursery Sunday School (18 months). While the other children played quietly, I pulled their hair and threw their toys. My brother Andy was born the day before I turned two: I responded by tipping over his bassinet (while he was in it) and violently beating my doll out of frustration. What was wrong with me? my parents wondered. I wasn't anything like their friends' babies. They questioned the pediatrician (Did I need psychological help?) and were somewhat reassured by an articled titled "The Active Child." Surely, they had nightmares about sending me to school. Would I sit in my chair? Would I still pull hair? Would I be as bossy with the other kids as I was with my baby brother? How many calls from the teacher would they get? But by they time I started kindergarten, I had completely changed. I began channelling all that physical energy into something else: pleasing the teacher. I also became very, very shy. My parents did indeed hear my teachers voice concerns: "She could contribute so much to our class...if only she weren't so shy." Not the kind of phone calls they would have predicted based on my two-year-old self.
Here are some examples in my own children. Baby David was physically active, fearless, enthusiastic, and confident. Toddler David was physically active, fearless, enthusiastic, and confident. Greg and I naturally assumed that Big Kid David and Adult David would be physically active, fearless, enthusiastic, and confident. (This is where I ignored my mom.) But Preschooler David seems to be taking a bit of a detour...or maybe it's not a detour. As David has become more self-aware, he has also become less self-assured. He is no longer fearless. (Remember this and this?) And, while I always viewed his physicality in terms of gross motor skills, it turns out he is the Fine Motor Skills Master--he can cut with scissors, draw a perfect circle, and color within the lines. I never would have imagined him as an arts 'n' crafts kind of boy because that involves sitting down for more than three seconds, but he loves that stuff! What other talents and interests am I blind to because they don't fit my definition of David? And why is it so unsettling that I don't have him all figured out?
Mary is even more of a label-buster than David. For the first four or five months of Mary's life, she was: Sweet. I resisted this adjective for some time, assuming I was inclined to use it solely because she was a girl and society dictates that girls be sweet. I crumbled--she was just so dang sweet! The best way to describe her was "my sweet baby girl." But now, at seven months, "sweet" is not a word that immediately comes to mind. Mary is tough--she enjoys wrestling with David and, despite the fact he is three times her size, she can hold her own remarkably well. But does her whiny-ness (she whines A LOT) cancel out her toughness? She's incredibly social, but she's also a mommy's-girl. She's probably more physical than David was, but she's quiet about it. She secretly, and with much determination, will work on a skill until it's perfected. The next thing you know, she's disappeared from sight or is trying to stand up in her high chair (yikes!). She carefully, methodically investigates the world. But I wouldn't describe her as serious. She spontaneously bursts into laughter, so sometimes I think she's a little loony. Mary can play independently, but she hates more than anything to be left out. She's generally cheerful, but her too-frequent moaning can deteriorate into fell-fledged meltdowns. She is demanding and easy-going, entertaining and annoying, gleeful and cranky. Sometimes I wonder what happened to my sweet little girl, but then she'll rest her head on my shoulder (only for a second) or try to put that extra pacifier she found in my mouth (so thoughtful!). Who is Mary? She's still my sweet baby girl (sometimes), but she's also my slimy (yes, slimy), smiley, whiny, happy, crazy, lovey, busy, needy baby girl. And she's even more than that.
We unconsciously (or consciously) apply labels to our children, and we can be slow to see anything else in them. Our children become defined by the three or four adjectives we use to describe them. (That leads to the whole nature-nurture debate--are we describing nature or are we nurturing a description?) As human beings, it is only natural to label (isn't that what language is?); we label to cope, organize, and understand. So it makes perfect sense that we label our children. But our children become circumscribed by that handful of adjectives, and anything they do outside the circle is "surprising." Maybe certain behaviors wouldn't be so "surprising" if we were better able to see our children as complex (and contradiction-filled) selves.
Can I ever really describe Mary? Can I ever explain who David is with words? I doubt it. (Heck, I can't even explain myself!) But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try. Observing my children, attempting to understand them, and then trying to express what I've learned in words (be it here, or at night with Greg, or on the phone with a family member, or in my own quiet reflections). I can't escape the adjectives. I need them. But I think I will try to use more, even contradictory ones, to describe my children, to allow them more freedom to be the unique, complicated human beings they are, even at ages three and seven months. Knowing full well that even if I use a thousand different words, they will still surprise me.
