On Abigail

This little girl has the strength and intelligence beyond those of most of the people I see around me. If we can just orient them. Teach her to harness them. For her, it would be like having access to the "Force". She has so much energy and potential to harness. Right now her life is completely focused on play. Play is her end-all be-all. Play is her zen, her nirvana. She seeks it every moment. Eternal play is her unattainable perfection of the human state. When she's not playing she's dreaming of play. When she's not dreaming of play, she's dreaming of when she can dream of play. That's her day, and mine, really. My job, unfortunately, is to keep her grounded when necessary, but let her take flight when possible. It's not that she can't focus, she can! When she wants to focus on something, she does. Let her play her DS, and she's gone for hours. So she's able to. It's just the motivation.

She's only 8, we know. But she does not have the same self-control as her peers. Her teachers have mentioned it, at the same time saying we need to test her for being gifted. The adults at her weekly church group mentioned that as well. We don't want to push her beyond her social level, but we also have to challenge her intellectually, and help her build her character.

However, she has made fairly significant improvement. Early on in the school year, she was often still doing her schoolwork until her bedtime at 8pm. Now we can count on her being done before dinner and often on time (3pm). Her showers took up to an hour. Now they're down to 20 minutes. She's regularly ready on time, and even early. Our focus is now gradually shifting toward her ability to obey and follow directions. Even though, she still cannot get through any one event without including some play. We don't mind that so much when she keeps to the rather reasonable limits we've set for her. For instance, she gets up at 7am and has 1.5 hrs to make her bed, shower, eat breakfast. She usually makes that now.

We'll just continue to take our time. We'll use all the methods available to us as parents: reward, punishment, discipline, motivation, education, thinking exercises... She's always been too intelligent and insightful to just push our way through. She questions everything, and wants to understand. We are putting forth an effort to keep our parenting transparent. We tell her what we're trying, and why, so that she can work with us on it. We often seek her suggestions as well. We make it clear that we cannot control her or force her to take any action. We can only implement consequences, positive or negative. She is always under her own control and is responsible for her every action. It's a telling statement about my own childhood that this was a concept I only recognized after she was born. It was such a simple yet profound realization that I had to share it with her and constantly remind her of it.

It's an interesting give and take that I never experienced as a child. So maybe I become a little too enthusiastic about passing on what I think about a situation. Heh... Michel often tells me that I explain way too much. I just think Abigail's mind is so powerful that she needs that depth of understanding to lock it in. Still, I do tend to go on... I've limited that somewhat. So we've long been taking the tack of showing her just what we are trying to do with her. We're making it more of a walking alongside her, instead of the driving parents from behind. We're teaching her up front just exactly what it is we're trying to accomplish as parents; to understand what it is to progress as a human with the tools we're given. God has given her so much, and it's up to her to do with herself what she will. This is where her strength comes in. She fails often. She picks herself back up. She succeeds, fails again, gets back up. Amazing. Just. Amazing.

Our true test is to walk the line of pushing her hard enough, but not too hard. Of being strict, but loving. Driving, and accepting. Sometimes we swing one way or another. I think one strength of ours as parents is that we strive to tell her when we screwed up and apologize. Bring her more into the idea of her own progress.

But this constant fight is just that: a fight. Constantly. Boy, what a handful, eh? It's a good thing we didn't make two. We'd need a whole other set of parents!

I also occasionally work out a Father-Daughter date - a term she gets rather embarrassed about. She doesn't want to think of them that way or call them that. But it adds a little layer of intimacy we both need. Our last one was a trip to the nature center for a bit of winter woodland exploring (see the picture in the album link below where she is wearing multiple layers to demonstrate how animals are prepared for cold weather). She used her camera (my old one) as the designated class photographer. She snapped just about everything. She was also intensely observant and vocal. So many of the children and parents just stood there doing and saying virtually nothing. Abigail's interest and enthusiasm quickly spread to the other children. It's also amazing how few of the children (and parents) were even properly dressed for walking around the woods with snow and ice everywhere. They had flat bottomed shoes on, or tennis shoes. Abigail and I were the only ones with snow boots! I was helping children and parents to negotiate what is normally a walking path, but was more of a skating rink. Weird.

She is developing into a beautiful young woman. Today I saw Abigail sitting on the couch in Michel's arms. You've seen their similarities. It's only stronger now. If Michel is any indication of Abigail's future beauty, she's got a lot to look forward to. I had to take a picture (sorry for the grainy factor, my new camera sucks in anything less than perfect lighting):


We are rather isolated here, though. Not much in the way of human contact other than ourselves. At least she has a friend next door: a 10 year old girl named Fiona. Abigail started going to a church function for girls on Wednesday nights and invited Fiona after a couple times. They have rewards at the end of the year (given out this past week) for things like devotions and verse memorization. Abigail did virtually none of it, and the week before was quite upset that she had no points but blamed it on the few nights where they didn't track points. However, Fiona got nearly all of her verses and devotions having started much later than Abigail and therefore presented Abigail a poignant lesson supporting what we've been trying to teach her all these months: that work nets reward, not inaction.

While this may come across as a negative statement, I hope it does not. I hope that this post comes forward more as a declaration of my daughter's astounding qualities and efforts. A declaration that we are so proud of our daughter. She has surprised us in so many ways. Many of our seeds of wisdom (what little we have) have taken root in her life. She now completely understands the value of honesty. I, of course, do not expect her to always tell me the truth, but I know with all clarity that she has the foundation of a pure character. I know that if she has no other guidance from us that she would push forward with perfect understanding of the necessity of a righteous life. Honesty, service to others, pushing towards a better self, self-analysis and betterment, and intellectual evaluation of information coming your way without blind acceptance, and loving our Lord God and Savior.

The fulfillment of this job of stay-at-home Dad is truly fantastic in it's challenging difficulty, complexity, constancy of work, and deep rewards. The most telling anecdote of the truth of this statement is this: so many people have asked me if I missed the flying - I always take a moment to make sure it's still true, the answer is always "No, not in the slightest. I am home with my children."