A Mind of Her Own

Sometimes because my daughter has a hard time expressing herself and what's going on inside her head, I get lulled into a false sense that not much is going on. Nothing could be further from the truth. And lately, my little girl has decided she wants to be wherever I am. I actually enjoy this and her desire to help me around the house. It's frustrating to her though. She's not able to negotiate the stairs as well as she used to with her new ankle braces. So if I go upstairs to do something in the bedrooms and she wants to come along she is usually just arriving at the top of the stairs when I'm ready to come back down. This happened to my wife today.

My wife and daughter were downstairs and my wife needed to do a couple of things upstairs. My daughter wanted to help out and headed up the stairs too. She made it to the top just in time to see my wife ready to head back down. Frustrated, my little girl launched into a temper tantrum and my wife put her in time out.

"When you're done, you can come back downstairs and help me some more," my wife told her.

After a while the tantrum stopped and my wife went to investigate. Our little daughter quit crying, decided instead of rejoining her mother that she was tired. So instead she went to her room, closed her door, climbed into her bed and fell asleep.

So she may not have the ability to tell us everything that she's thinking, but she's definitely getting to be quite the little decision maker.