Feb. 3: I was grocery shopping at Woodman’s yesterday. Sylvia identified something she wanted and was trying determinedly to catapult herself out of the grocery cart. A kind, elderly woman standing nearby commented, “My goodness, it seems like she really knows what she wants. You wouldn’t think she’d be old enough to know what she wanted!” Then the nice woman walked away, leaving me speechless. I think my jaw may have dropped. Because, quite truthfully, Sylvia has known what she wanted since the moment she came into this world. And really, woe be it to she who tries to convince her otherwise!
As I was putting Sylvie to bed tonight, I was reminded of two areas that she continues to feel adamantly about. The girl has an abiding opposition to books. She also really can’t stand it when I try to soothe her with lullabies.
Since she was old enough to focus her eyes, she has arched her back and turned away when I hold a book in front of her. She has no interest. Zero. I’ve tried reading her the same two pages of the same book for several weeks, and she stopped crying, but she is much happier when I don’t try it. Occasionally, she’ll glance at the page, but she then tries to shut the book. It’s, well, interesting. The big exception is Pat the Bunny. She really enjoys that book and does all the activities. It’s so cute to see her smell the flowers, play peek-a-boo with Paul, and put her finger through Mummy’s ring! So we’ll keep trying.
As for lullabies, even when we were in the hospital after her birth, she would wiggle uncomfortably when I would sing to her. We sang to Andrew all the time. I grew hoarse singing him to sleep. For Sylvie, however, the best way to calm her when she was tiny was to hold her tight against my body and leap exuberantly up and down while kinda shouting “SHHHHHHH SSSSHHHHHHHHH!!!” Then we learned about the effectiveness of the oven exhaust fan. And I found myself buying her a $50 machine whose sole purpose is to make white noise.
I’ve since read several of Mary Sheedy Kurcinka‘s books, and I’m finding that Sylvia’s temperament can be (currently) characterized as “energetic” “persistent” and at least for sound “sensitive.” She notes right in her book that kids with these personality traits can have a hard time sleeping because they are easily stimulated (even by things like lullabies) and often find things like white noise machines helpful.
This reminds me that I loved The Happiest Baby on the Block and recommend it to new parents. And Mary Sheedy Kurcina’s book Raising Your Spirited Child is a wonderful read for parents of children with all personality types. Her book Sleepless in America recently encouraged me to try putting Andrew to bed earlier. He’s now getting about an extra hour of sleep a day, and that’s been a good thing all around.
I’m interested to find where Sylvie’s determination will take her in life. She’s quite the girl!