Oy!

One step forward, 8 steps in 8 different directions that swing out like an octopus's tentacles. Up, down and all around. This post is a continuation of the last most recent one, right down there, under here.

I went to pick up Genea from the bus yesterday. The bus drops her and the girl across the street off in the middle of our block. Genea comes barreling off the bus, as she does every day, as if she has not seen me for a month screaming 'mommyyyyyyyyyyy mommyyyyyyyyyyyy'. I grab her hand, and since it is winter and the cold is unholy, we walk quickly to our driveway and into our house. The other little girl goes either with her mom back into her house, or a few times a week her dad waits for her at the stop in his car, and they go to his house. Yesterday must have been a Dad day again, because he was there waiting on the street in his red car.

ANYway, while Genea managed to be appropriate at her friends house the other day, she has blown up the whole thing into practically getting married to the girl and moving in to their house to be BFF's. Emphasis on the last F (Best Friends FOREVER). Naturally. When you have a kid who has been passed around like a hot potato, and someone shows a smidge of interest in her, she reacts in a disproportionately elevated way. Like she is in love. Like so in love they are selecting china patterns together (go for the Fiesta Ware, always fashionable). Spending the rest of their lives together in sickness and in health. Sure, a lot of regular kids act like this too. The difference here is no one, let alone this unsuspecting 5 year old girl, can live up to the hype. No kid can maintain the opposite half of what Genea is expecting. This will crash and burn. Regular kids would experience a disappointment in each other and learn and move on. They might 'fight' and make up, or get jealous of each other spending time with another person, but they would get past it. Genea is going to have to be coached in every single facet of this relationship in the hope on the wing of a prayer that she will not be scarred by it. She will not learn experientially. She will learn only with very specific teaching to each situation as it occurs.

We were walking up our driveway and Genea was telling me all about all the things she and her friend will be doing. She tells me she is going to a sleepover, next week is a party, etc. She tells me she is going over to her house again today to play and I tell her I don't think that will be today, because I just saw your friend going to her dad's car. Genea turns to look, it takes her a minute because she is stuffed into 70 pounds of snow gear, she sees what I am saying is true and she begins this pathetic brain crushing howl. When the choices are fight, flight or freeze, she will freeze. She stops in her tracks like she has suddenly frozen to the ground. She cries out her friends name and she is loud. LOUD. And I am somehow off my game and not expecting this reaction (silly me!) and all I can think is, oh my unholy hell get her in the house before someone hears her because if one of the parents hears this they are really going to think something is weird. Just because something IS weird, I was hoping to get a little further along before everyone knew. Before I had to start making explanations that I can barely explain myself. Cover! Protect! Save her! Only now Genea is fighting me and howling her friends name as loud as she can and refusing to walk any further and so I grabbed the back of her hood and start pushing/ dragging her into the house, she tries to stop at the door jam and seriously, this other kid is not even in her dads car all the way yet and she is going to hear this any second and get fuh-REAK-ed out and so I gave Genea one last shove into the house and threw my front door shut. Phew. I think, I think we made it. My poor kid is still crying and I am trying to explain to her that her friend goes to her Dads house sometimes, she knows that, and remember I said we would invite her over next week. The Husband happened to be home and he comes to talk to her too, and I am hugging her, then he is hugging her. Then he asks her, did she think her friend was going away forever and not coming back?

Oh.
OF COURSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT SHE THOUGHT WAS HAPPENING WHY WOULD SHE THINK ANYTHING ELSE.

Sheesh. Tragedy over. Or at least, tragedy bypassed this time.

And, if I may, I do have a brag. I decided my girls should both learn to spell their full names and learn our phone number (on the ball this mom is lol). Genea already knows her name, but not the number. So, I made little cards for them both to practice with and memorize the information. We have never tried this before, we have had bigger things to tackle honestly. I sat down with Genea to show her what I do to memorize things, and in under 2 minutes, seriously, we repeated it less than 5 times, she had it down. I asked her again 15 minutes later, and she still knew it. Smart little thing!