Before I begin what you may think is the reason this child will need therapy, let me say this: M is awesome.
Best 6 year old that could have ever landed into my life.
Cherry on the sundae of our family. Leaves me love notes in my purse, is mini-stylist, runs a hair and beauty salon out of the corner of her room, likes fingerless gloves, is overall just plain delightful.
However, as no one is perfect robot kid (or if there are kids like that, I am glad they are not my kid), M is sometimes very convinced of her complete rightness in whatever it is she is thinking/doing/planning/wearing.
Ok, always convinced.
At home, this quality is muffled somewhat by her older sisters, our two dogs (more the bad one than the good one, but both), me, Disney Channel, etc. But at school, where M is not the youngest, not the smallest, apparently this character trait emerges, like, A LOT.
And we just got the end-of-year reports on all of the kids (I will discuss why I sobbed in nostalgic emotional frenzy reading V's at another time, this is all M) and let me say:
Our school is fantastic, they give constant feedback, several conferences each year in which your child is basically psychoanalyzed to the point you are freaked out about how much they get your kid, you know how things are going all the time.
But the end-of-year one is kind of a thesis on your child, and reading M's cracked me UP. She is super reader, super math-er, super Spanish, super artist, in general rocking Kindergarten like she invented it. But there is always a "however . . ." (unless you have robot kid, if so you can go get the robot to wax your car or something).
Our however in M's case, is that she has a tendency to be bossy.
Capital B Bossy.
I know this, although it is more apparent at school without the other members of this household of whirling dervishes.
So reading her report (Which? Again, school is fab, this thing is 10 pages of small type long with every quality assessed and input from all the specialists and essays from the teacher, really, is work of art),
I was happy to see how well she was doing, and even more than that, totally entertained by the various ways in which her teacher had to write "M is bossy" in different ways in each section of this thing.
I know her teacher well, she is awesome, and I know she loves M, so the thought of her with a thesaurus out, looking up synonyms for "bossy," or asking others, "what's another word for bossy?" cracked me up. Here is some of the teacher's best work:
"She is such a happy, lively person, when she slips it is when her strong personality gets the best of her."
Translation: Bossy.
"M is bright and excels when she can act as leader or be in charge of the organization of an activity. She has the ability to pull people together to accomplish objectives."
Translation: Bossy.
"M is a leader in many areas, we will work to support her as she learns the value of stepping back before stepping in."
Translation: Bossy.
"M has a strong personality and enjoys being the leader, she understands what needs to be done and how to affect that. She is learning to better take into account the feelings of those she is leading." Translation: Bossy.
"M can get frustrated by the behavior of some and be less than generous in her comments, but she is growing in her ability to understand others or at least refrain from commenting."
Ha! And Translation: Bossy.
I repeat, this is not me slamming my M.
She is so great and fantastic and fun and she car dances and loves with her whole heart and I adore her to the stars and moon.
Also, she is bossy.
And the school is on it, as they are great, and we are on it, as much as is possible given this house is crazy house of all sorts of personalities, and I am sure she'll get a feel for when to bring out the Bossy and when to leave it in her sparkly purse for later.
If I were not so confident in her, I would not write about how her Kindergarten teacher says she is Bossy.
I am mostly writing right now because
1. avoiding other stuff and
2. I am paying homage to the delicate, sensitive, creative writing skills of her teacher, because this is masterpiece of Synonyms For Bossy.
I give it gold star.
