Korbyn is definitely one of a kind. In this picture she came up to me and said "mommy, I'm fierce! Take a picture." She is (too) smart, has an uncanny sense of direction, hilarious, witty, friendly, helpful, high maintenance, a "do it myself-er," has a touch of OCD, and a type A personality. The last three can put me at my wits end with this girl sometimes. I've even found myself researching helpful tips on how to raise a type A personality girl. Everything is a competition and she always has to win. Things...that normally shouldn't matter, have to be in correct places or need to be in a correct order and "correct" meaning according to Korbyn. We went to VBS yesterday evening and her group was playing a game. Part of the game was that they had to walk along a 2x4 plank of wood without falling off. While the girl in front of Korbyn was going, I heard Korbyn say, "I can do that better than you can," and there was no joking about it. I pulled her aside and explained to her that that probably didn't make her friend feel very good. I told her to be friendly and cheer her on instead.
Now I'm a bit type A myself, so this just makes things even more interesting. When making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich I cringe at the thought of Korbyn helping me for fear of getting it everywhere or her messing up and us having to throw it away and start over...I know, I don't know where she gets it from. So it's very often that I just have to step back, hold my tongue, and just let her try. This morning I scooped the peanut butter and jelly onto the toast and she wanted to spread it. I literally had to walk away for a few minutes just so she could do it. When I came back, wouldn't you know she spread it perfectly and had the two pieces together and was trying to already cut it? She amazes me.
She also has some of my tendencies to be somewhat of a pushover. I've seen her in groups of little girls, and some of these girls can be absolute brats, where they are so rude to her and it makes my blood boil. But Korbyn is so sweet that she won't be ugly back or hit them or even go tattle on them, she just wants to play with them. The other day I took her and Evan to Thinkery in Austin. We were at the pretend "farmer's market" and she was cooking me up some yummy stuff in the play kitchen. She went to go get an entire basket of eggs which took her several minutes to gather. When she came back she set them on the counter, I picked up something off the floor that Evan dropped and when I looked back up her eggs were gone! I looked around and saw another little boy who had a basket that looked an awful lot like Korbyn's. I asked her, "Korbyn, did that boy just take your eggs?" She looked at me trying not to look upset and cry and said, "yes, but that's OK, he can have them." I said "No, it's not OK. Go over and tell him those were your eggs and if he would like some he can go get his own or you can share with him." She asked if I would go with her and I so would have if I didn't have Evan and there weren't about 100 other little kids around that I would have to search him out in, so we just continued to play. She went to go get more eggs and wouldn't you know this same little boy came back over and tried to take them again! This time I caught him though. I politely said "uh, no you can't take those because someone is playing with these, but there's plenty more over there." Where was this kid's mom?!
That brings me to another point that has really been on my mind lately now that Korbyn is getting older and more social. Whoever came up with the term "helicopter parent" needs to be kicked. Now, society is so afraid to be labeled as a helicopter parent that they just let their kids do whatever they want! Well guess what? They are all creating monsters!!! If you don't know what a helicopter parent is, the Merriam-Webster definition is:
a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child. That's right, it's actually IN the dictionary! Now, I'm sure the original use of this word was used for parents who didn't let their children have any life experiences of their own, but unfortunately it has made young parents so afraid of being called this that they don't really parent their kids at all. My first year of teaching really opened my eyes to this. You would be shocked at what some of these kids do or say. And they do or say these things because no one has ever corrected them, so how on earth would they know that it's not OK?! It just makes me nervous as to what kind of world our kids are going to have to grow up in. So you better believe that I will be correcting (parenting) my children if they are doing something socially unacceptable or downright mean. Just think of what a wonderful place this would be if everyone did that :)
