Josephine and I are having good days and well, not such good ones. It's a bit like a box of chocolates: you never know if you're going to get the sweet belgian truffle or a bitter (day).
She's currently going through a transition of becoming far more independent.
This comes, as all things in life, with both the good and the less good! I do see this as a positive thing and proud of her for getting herself dressed or cycling waaaay ahead of me, you know. But there is also a price. There are things she wants (no, INSISTS) on doing, that she's not yet ready for. So it's a battle quite often. And I feel it's such a shame that she's at KG all morning until 1pm and then comes home to her mother who is constantly wanting to "restrict"! Argh.
(btw: not that she has "free range" at KG. They're also strict. But there are older kids as they're mixed group aged 3-6, so she has older role models whom she admires and aspires to)
But in our afternoons together, I so wish for harmony and just a nice time and not regular upstream swimming that seems to be going on a lot! (And I'm not that fit any more. It takes it out of me!)
Apart from the new stage she's busy going through, she's also stopping her midday sleep. She often falls asleep on the bus on the way home, and naps 10minutes. But she wakes up once she's with me and also once we get home to her turf where she's happy to play with her things, have another bite to eat, etc. And then it's getting quite late...and well, we now push through and aim for an ealier bedtime.
So afternoons, she's often tired, which is a big contributor towards less favourable behaviour! ;-)
But, there are days where she is just so sweet. And to my mind a bit of "the Josephine that I remember from 2 months ago". The one that is active, but generally obedient and flexible or whatever. Those days do still exist. Today was THANKFULLY one of THOSE GOOD days. She was just going with the flow, let's say.
Yesterday was not such a day. She ended up losing her ants, her doll, all her stickers (one by one) as I took them away as a punishment and got frequent lectures. I'd put my head on the block the Japanese in our block had a brief moment of *very wide eyes* (for once).
Anyway, I'm finding it generally quite tough with her at the moment. Of course, she's been thrown into the deep end a bit: move to Japan after only being in Germany 5 months; new school; new friends; German all day; bus; etc! She's been actually BRILLIANT with adapting - hats off! She's really just slotted right in which was a truly *pleasant* *surprise* for us. Our previously shy girl is now: not so shy. She's growing up. She's going through a new stage.
But basically, she's been forced to be very independent. Before she'd stick out her foot to me so I could put on her socks and shoes. Or she'd always want me to accompany her to the toilet (which admittedly, she still often does want) or whatever. But now, she's almost (?) pushing me away a bit in her attempt to learn how to do it herself. I get the feeling she now thinks that she's hit an age where she's capable and allowed to do basically anything. She's old enough to go to KG, so she's old enough to do whatever (can't think of examples now! But there are plenty!)
I feel a little trapped. What to do? Reduce her KG hours? Spend more quality time with her when she's home to work on our relationship? XY?
At the end of the day: she NEEDS to get her German more up to speed if she's to go to school in Germany at some point otherwise, she's always going to be struggling as it's core to all her subjects. Michael is now making a more concerted effort at home to speak German - great. But the time is too short: early mornings and just 5minutes in the evenings tops. She needs more.
I don't mean to come across as a pushy / over ambitious mom. But I seriously just want the best for her. I want her to be able to understand her school lessons oneday and not for the language medium to be a hurdle; an extra hurdle to get over. I want her to be able to just focus on her material oneday (biology/history or whatever) and not have to think 10x about the sentence she's listening to/ reading. I want that part to be "natural".
While her English is really super (and she's really communicating very well without any problems and I wouldn't have any such concerns if she were to go to an English school), it's a different story with her German. And I'm worried. Worried that she'll end up at school oneday and just be frustrated and not be ABLE to do her best and then not be ABLE to make a career choice that she *might* prefer? Whatever!! Grrrr!
I have diverted. That happens when I'm home alone (Michael is in Korea on business and getting back at midnight...so I have time to rattle off and put you to sleep).
Bottom line: Her and I are not plain sailing at the moment, but I think it's necesary for her to keep up her KG for now. And actually she is enjoying it. In the afternoons, I have both her and Evie. I can't exactly ignore Evie, so I play evenly with them. I try to put Evie down at 6pm and then have about 60-75minutes with Josephine one-on-one. And that time I really try to put everything down and play with her, read to her and chat with her. She loves this time and so do I. It's then that she tells me "Mamma, I actually love you weally lots", whilst nodding her head to affirm it. And this melts my heart and actually encourages me.
So, this is what we have been doing. The problem of upstreaming it during the afternoons isn't solved yet, but maybe that will just take time. We're crossing an intersection here in our household!
She loves me to make up stories for her. At the moment we're doing the story called "The day Mamma left her brain at the train station." Don't laugh. I actually do leave it there. Mostly by accident of course.
So the story goes like this a bit:
....And then after her tea, Mamma ran her tongue across her front teeth and thought "EW! I've got to brush them immediately! They're all FURRY! Ew!!" So, she ran off to the bathroom, grabbed her toothbrush, put the stuff on the bristles and started brushing. "Ew again! Gross! Something's wrong! This stuff tastes disgusting" she said taking the toothbrush out of her mouth. She looked down at the tube and ...then she realised...that wasn't toothpaste at all!! That was Pappa's shaving cream! Mamma had put Pappa's shaving cream on her toothbrush by mistake.
....and then it dawned on her ...." Oh dear! Mamma made this silly mistake because....she left her brain at the train station."
And then ...there are about another 5 or 6 other silly fings dat Mamma does that day and finally she can take it no more and goes to fetch her brain and everything returns to normal. Yeah!
...Jozie's eyes shine! She loves the stories, she loves fantasy, she loves just chatting. She calls it "girl chatting time!"
And she gets pretty creative herself. I told her that on Saturday we're going to a birthday party...
"Oh wow! Do you fink it's mine!?!?" she asked quizzically.
"No, my darling. It's your friend, Isabella's. And it's going to be a princess party so you get to wear a very very special ball gown dress. Wow!!"
"Ja, I can just wear dat one wif the pink fairies on it! And when is it going to be my birfday do you fink?"
"Well, first it's Mamma's birthday. Then it's Christmas and a few weeks after that, THEN it's YOUR birthday!!! And we're going to have a super duper special party for you!!"
"Wow, do you fink all da faiwies and pwincesses are going to come to my one too? I just going to also invite Timo and he's going to wescue me from my tower and fight off da dwagons. And den, he's going to pick me up and put me on his horse and we're going to gallop away into da sunset.
....and den, he's going to mawwy me. And den, we're going to just fall in loooove. And den we're going to go on da swings. And den da see-saw. And then we're going to catch some ANTS!!! Aaaaah, dat's going to be so MUCH fun!!!" she says dreamily and also excitedly.
"And Mamma," she continued, " for your birfday, we're just going to bake a faiwy cake. You're going to bake da cake. And I going to bake da cake too (actually, she means she's going to eat the batter, but anyway!!x) ; Evie is going to be da "setter" (the one to set the table); Pappa, he's just going to put da spwinkles on top to make it shiny. And den when we're finished our tea party, den we're ALL going to go to da park (said with big eyes, very animatedly) and we're going to ALL go on da swings and climb on the jungle gym. And den we're all going to catch some ants. Wow, dat's going to be amazing!!" she ended.
Anyway, again, back to the point. I guess, that we'll just continue focusing "our big girl special time" for the evenings in particular and hope that some kind of new rhythm will emerge and that the dust will settle in the afternoons.
