Loud Girls

In the other room right now are four eight or nine year old girls.  Three of these girls I have known since they were in kindergarten.  (Well, one is my own, so I've known her a little longer.)  The fourth is new to their school this year, and therefore new to me as well.  When the fourth girl joined our Brownie troop this year, her mother was somehow sold a bill of goods (by me).  She was told that our troop was made up of several girls who are shy, a little timid, sometimes a bit socially awkward, slow starters, uncomfortable in new situations, etc. etc.  I swear, if you saw our Brownie troop in June, this is exactly what you would have seen.  And then third grade started.

Somehow third grade has created completely different animals.  This was evident from the first time I had a whole gaggle of girls here (about week two of school).  We walked here from school, about a fifteen minute walk, and the conversations did not stop for the entire walk, the entire playdate, until the last girl was picked up and deposited in her own home.  When I peeked in on the girls, they were dancing and singing at the top of their lungs, putting on some bazaar show for the girls who looked back at them in the mirror.  These girls did not lack confidence.  They were not shy in front of brand new friends.  They were completely and totally comfortable in their own skin.  And LOUD.

When Zachary has friends over I expect them to be boisterous, rambunctious, bouncing off the walls, and constantly having to be shushed if Juliette is sleeping.  But Annalise's playdates have always been much quieter; the girls preferring to disappear into Annalise's room for vast amounts of time, only surfacing to eat or use the bathroom.  They may have been napping in there for as quiet as they were.  The other difference I've noticed is that Zachary and his friends are constantly negotiating what they will play next, changing their minds, and then another back and forth about the next activity.  Annalise's friends usually make a suggestion and Annalise just goes along.  Many of her friends are like this.  They will just go along with the crowd.  But this is not the case so much anymore.  These girls in my house right now all have opinions and are not afraid to voice them.  Even Annalise, the queen of going along with any suggestion, is actually voicing her opinions and being heard.

These girls have grown up a bit, but mostly their friendships have grown up.  These girls who have now known each other for years have finally truly accepted the friendship.  They now trust in each other -- enough to speak their minds and know that they will still be liked, respected and listened to.  They are now free to be themselves in front of their friends.  They are free to be the crazy, goofy, opinionated girls that we, as their parents, have seen for years.

In a small town like ours, people move in and stay.  People do not move away.  (Actually they do move away: they leave to go to college, have a single life, get married and start a family.  But when it comes time for their kids to start school, inevitably, we come back.)  Annalise will be stuck with these kids for the next ten years of her life.  What a blessing it is for her to have found friends who know her and love her and listen to her and respect her for the crazy, goofy, opinionated girl that she is.  These girls in the other room will very likely be her friends for life.  They will share in each others' ups and downs, triumphs and collapses.

So, yes, I unknowingly sold a mom (also my friend) a bill of goods.  But what her daughter got is so much more: a group of lovely, loud girls who trust in each other.

Girls Are Weird

Yesterday, the kids had a double play date over at our house. We decided to have an outdoor-only playdate because, well, we can (it's not raining! Yay!), but also because everyone is germy and borderline-sick, so we thought we'd minimize the germ-spreadage by keeping them all outside. It was great. They rode bikes and scooters, played with "swords", played on the sit upon spinny things, hid from one another, chased each other, etc. Juliette walked all over; played in the dirt; tried to get in the way of the bikes; layed down in the middle of the street. It was great.

At the end, the girls were playing with hula hoops. Annalise and Zachary just got hula hoops from my mom. My mom was buying one for herself and bought them for the kids as well. (Yes, you read that right. My mom bought HERSELF a hula hoop! She's 65 and she can still hula hoop like a rock star! According to my husband I look like Ozzy Osbourne when I hula hoop, so I guess I do, too. It's hard!!) Annalise has gotten quite good. She's confident and she whips that thing around. She almost knocked Juliette over the other day. A hula hoop can be dangerous. (I should have remembered this. "The Hula Hoop Incident" caused a trail of blood from my nose across the Paradise Canyon campus for years. It also covered my entire Brownie uniform. Deadly, those hula hoops.) Anyway, Annalise's BFF clearly hasn't had as much experience with the hula hoop, and so she wasn't as good. And that's when this weird thing happened.

They stopped hula hooping. When Annalise isn't good at something, she usually keeps going and going until she is. She taught herself to jump rope in one day. She's stubborn as hell (wonder where she gets that from?) and keeps trying and trying. But that's not what happened with BFF. But what's weird, is that it wasn't really BFF who stopped trying. It was Annalise who changed the activity. She saw that her friend wasn't doing as well and so she changed what she was doing. She started rolling the hula hoop. BFF immediately started rolling hers as well. And this was fine for a while until it was clear that Annalise was much better at rolling the hula hoop, too. So then she started messing up on purpose occasionally. And was saying weird things like, "Oh, I just got lucky that time. I'm not that good at it either. You're good, too." It was so weird. And then she got her condescending voice on, like she was an adult talking to a small child. "Good job! You did it!" It was like she was afraid to be good at something her friend wasn't. IT WAS SO WEIRD!

What's even weirder, is that I remember doing the same thing. Maybe I still do??? What is it with girls that we can't just be good at something and be good at it and that's it. Why does it have to be an issue. I remember lying about my grades to my friends because heaven forbid I did better than other people. I was SO SCARED to tell MY BFF (who was, admittedly, a scary person and SO not my BFF) that I got into UCSB. I knew that she hadn't heard yet and I didn't want to deal with that conversation. I remember downplaying my own strengths and boosting up others. Why do we do that? How does Annalise know to do this at the age of seven? Did I teach her that? God, I hope not! Is it something innate in women and girls that we are so sensitive to the feelings of others that it holds us back from our own successes? How do we counteract that? Of course I want Annalise to be sensitive to the feelings of others. That is one of her strengths. She has shown empathy from a way younger age than she should have been able to show such a thing. But is that holding her back from other strengths? How do we build our girls up without them feeling like they are keeping others down? In the long run, has this effected the success that I have had? Did I stifle my own talents when I was young and hence hold myself back from future success? I am so baffled by this. Maybe it's not everyone. Maybe it's just Weber girls? Does anyone else do this? The last thing I want is to have my daughter hold back on her own success on the hunch that it might make someone else "feel better." Annalise's BFF is one tough cookie. I seriously doubt she would be bothered by someone else doing better than her at something, especially when she has so many strengths herself. I am going to be seriously watching for this in the future; and watching what I do as well as my girls.