Note: This is another one of those posts where I unabashedly fawn over my daughter. I’ll try not to be too sloppy.
“To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.”
~Josh Billings
Last week was our parent-teacher conference for Mia. As some of you know, Daisy and I send our daughter to a dual immersion program where eighty percent of her day is in Spanish. She’s in first grade now. Last year, that number was ninety.
Daisy and I were keen to hear what her teacher had to say. We felt we had a clear idea, for better or worse, but were looking forward to a dot at the end of our sentence.
Our daughter, it turns out, is quite the the little wordsmith. Her magnificent maestra is pleased when students can line up three well articulated sentences. Mia is penning five paragraph papers… in a second tongue. She has a mature grasp of punctuation, and an apparent fondness for the quotation mark.
Mia isn’t a genius, but she is willing to work hard, and push through most any barrier impeding her comprehension. She’s been drawing, or writing since she could hold a pencil. She is rarely afraid to try, and therefore most often succeeds. For Daisy and I, this is a calliope of validating inspiration.
We’ve known Mia for seven and a half years, if we travel back to when she was no larger than a grain of rice, which I think is perfectly fair. Even then, she was dangling the strings and making us dance.
We were thrilled to have a discussion with an outstanding practitioner who spends the better part of seven hours with our daughter, each and every weekday. At school, Mia is undaunted. She’s fearless, and flies without worry, unafraid to fail, but anxious to produce.
At home, Mia sometimes moves with the mayhem of a tornado, juggling several ventures at once. She twirls from table to table, coloring Christmas ornaments, writing a letter to Santa, all while playing the architect to one of her famous “contraptions.”
It is easy to picture her in the classroom, and we acknowledge our fortune that Mia has a teacher who understands her student and wishes to articulate her productive, capable mind, yet also knows that her enthusiasm must be channeled. Our maestra will help teach Mia to be organized without squelching her spirit.
Mia’s a wonderful writer because she has an example to follow, and for this I am certainly proud, but there is a caveat.
I sometimes juggle topics like a sideshow attraction, and Mia’s a good enough listener to know that I frequently work on many different things at once. I must not only crow about the kudos, I must also look upon the side of the coin that is kissing the ground.
Our children are reflections in a puddle; rippling with an image not quite ours, but no doubt our distant double. To truly know who they are, we must have a clear understanding of who we are. Only then can we walk them toward their best.
Writer Dad
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