Choices

There are so many things I love about age 4.  I love that Zoe can tell me stories, share her opinions and we can have a conversation.  Her newest thing is making up a word, like "akooah" and calling it over and over and over again.  When I ask, "what does akooah mean?"  She'll say something like, "it's Chinese for come here please."  It cracks me up every time because she says the made up word with such confidence.  I'm positive she's not 100% aware that there is a place called China, that they do have a language and that, for all I know, "akooah" means flush the toilet.  She is very proud of her international language skills.

One thing we're getting into that is incredibly challenging is choices.  Zoe is a fairly easy kid.  She's rarely does things to get into trouble, somewhat laid back and just an absolute joy.  Now that we're nearing age 5, I'm seeing the topic of choices come out.

We aren't the parents who send her to time out.  We send her to her room, to sit on her bed and think about what she did.  When she realizes what she did and why it was a bad choice, she'll call to us and we'll talk about it.  It's similar to a time out, except that it's on her time, not our time.  If it takes her 10 minutes to figure it out, it's 10 minutes.  Sometimes it takes her 3 minutes.  You get the idea.  The ownership of the realization is on her, not on the clock.

Lately she's been making choices that we call bad choices.  She's gotten snappy, mouthy and throws crying fits that last 20 minutes because her balloon popped.  She has this belief that if she says "sorry" or stops crying, we'll acquiesce to her request.  We're having to dig deeper into consequences of choices, both good and bad ones.  It's been challenging. 

She doesn't really get sassy with me nor N, but she does with my mom.  She can be down right nasty.  It's quite a shock to see her acting this way.  Yet I know this is going to be a year where we learn some serious life lessons.  The blessing in all this is she knows that talking that way isn't right.  Now it's just getting her to make a better choice. 

Maybe "akooah" is Chinese for "Lord give me strength."  Perhaps I'm going to start work on my international mommy language.  I think I'm going to need it.