She is JUST like him in Musings

In this time of Nathan being home more I have come to realize something: our daughter’s brain functions just like his. The best example is that when my husband was in first grade, the teacher called in his mom and told her she was concerned he had attention problems and may even need medication. My mother in law knew this wasn’t the problem.

The problem was simple: he was bored. Having already learned all the subject matter of first grade at home, he was breezing through his work and when he got bored he found it hard to sit still. The teacher had to eventually give him more to do to keep him from disrupting the class.

It dawned on me that that is exactly how Leah is. She is so smart for her age. She isn’t even 3 and she knows all her letters, colors, and numbers to 10. She even knows what sound most letters make. She speaks in full sentences. She can play matching games. Her memory is beyond impressive. Her mind is ahead of her body in so many ways (hence why potty training hasn’t clicked yet)

If she has an activity to focus her attention on, she will block out all distractions. But if she has nothing to do or on the days she has already played with every toy, and puzzle, and read every book–she gets bored. And bored Leah is madness. You can tell she hates it and we hate it just as much. She will just start running around throwing things or pulling the dog’s fur. Things she knows she isn’t supposed to do.

Now that I’ve realized this about her I’m not sure what to do to reign it in. I don’t want to be responsible for always entertaining her. But I do feel like some more planned activities in place would be good. Especially for when baby sister gets here.

Nathan still needs things to occupy his mind, by the way. He will sit for hours if he has a video game to play or a basketball game to watch. But to tell him to just sit on the porch and watch the sunset with me–that’s a hard no. I’ll admit it is frustrating for me because I love those kinds of down times where your mind is free to wonder and you can just talk about nonsense or deep meaningful things. He will do it for my sake sometimes, but I often feel like I complete with the phone, TV, and video games a lot and this is the exact reason why.

No development yet on the job front. But he is doing a lot more with his side business to make some extra money so that’s great! He’s still applying for like 6 jobs a day at least. So hopefully something comes through really soon.