Wednesday, June 25, 2008

simply shocking

a side note from "stroke speak" for today - yesterday at 3:39 in the afternoon, hubbie and I left our middle child - the red-headed beachgirl at mini-camp for two nights and three days! To many, this may not mean a whole lot, but when I think about the road of shyness that child has traveled to get to this point, it is still stunning to me that she is there!

Beachgirl dropped out of 2 & 3 year old pre-school (2 hours of fun a day) within the first week both years because she could not be separated from her mother. She never ever spoke to anyone outside of the family, she was so painfully shy she started crying as soon as we got in the car to go anywhere, even the playground. Yes, this drove me crazy, and I lost lots and lots of sleep thinking she would be socially backward for the rest of her life. She came around a bit when school started and loved going to Kindergarten and so on, but she still was extremely hesitant about doing anything new.

When her older brother started going to camp, she expressed no interest at all, and let us know that there was "no way" she was going to sleep away EVER - again, a tidbit that caused me much grief. Life started changing in small baby steps when she turned 7 and she went on her first sleep over birthday party. She didn't last all night, but she did make it until 10:00 when she got tired, found a phone and called us to come home to go to bed.

I am sure she just hit a new level of "readyness" when she started swimming, but I fully credit swimming with breaking beachgirl out of her shell! I laughed when I realized that the child was going to have to dive off the blocks ... she would never put herself out there like that for people to watch her (or so I thought)! No problem though, the first meet she just jumped right up on the blocks, dove off, was disqualified in the race, laughed, and that was the absolute end of the shy, demure, quiet little girl with whom we were so familiar.

And now she is at sleep-a-way camp! What a transformation!!!!!!

2 comments:

JCK said...

What a joy to see her growth. I am continually amazed by the stepping stones our children go through. Congrats! To both of you. :)

HRH said...

I can only hope a similar transformation can occur at my house with my oldest or I will be college bound in 10 years to hold his hand during class...