... I am not great at the Play stuff but I am going to have to be!
Grinity- I always feel like you really understand and after reading your post I just sighed and felt some peace. It is so hard hearing her express those feelings but well she feels them.
Things are better tonight. She went down, no problem. And we had dinner with one of her firends tonight. We meet at Safeway (yep the grocery store is one of the only resturants here!) And we had sandwiches and the girls played and DD got frusterated once, but her friend while she didn't understand exactly what the senario DD was acting out involving "Knights and Saviors" She hid with DD under the table etc, and DD told me in the car on the way up the mountain. "Mom, it felt like it fit okay tonight."
I was so thrilled that she was at least happy!
That's the spirit! What a blessing that we get to be experts in whole new areas! I used to set a timer for imaginary play, so I could relax into it - knowing that "I can do anything for 15 minutes!" I guess the point here is to develop our patience for when they get to be teenagers - LOL!
I've seen lots of 'when they get better in public, they have to pay the price at home.' I think it is a very good sign, but then there is a next step where we start expecting them to handle the strong emotions themselves - not at age 3 for sure - just at some point, depending on the child. Because what we feed grows and it's a very fine line for some kids. My tendency is to err on the side of allowing feelings to be expressed, which is why 'Nurtured Heart Approach' was so valuable to me. Really - one time I substitute taught a 5th grade religious school class that was known to be 'shy, reserved, not the brightest ones' and within 90 minutes we were having such a lively discussion that the principal had to come down the hall and glare at us. I could tell that she was impressed underneath.
Anyway, another trick I used with DS when he was feeling isolated was to tell him about some of the challenges and experiences all of the other online gifties were having. Sometimes I asked his advice. Sometimes I told it as news, as if we were all distant cousins. Just so he know that there existed other kids with similar challenges. So you can tell your DD that Auntie Grinity had to play pretend 'momma and baby dinosaur' with her son because the other kids didn't know what dinos were, and that they laid eggs. So Moms can stand in for friends to some degree, and she isn't the only one in that situation.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
