Wow! How time flies! It's been totally crazy few months. But good crazy. We had an awesome time in Perth. WHat an awesome city Perth has become! And then it was back to reality in Sydney.....and I still do love Sydney.
The girls have started mainstream school for about a month and a half now. Unlike them, I'm still getting used to the style of teaching there. I'm biting my tongue and keeping (or trying to) an open mind. And watching Ken Robinson's talks on YouTube doesn't help in keeping this mind open. But let's leave that topic to another time.
One thing I'd like to talk about is childhood friendships. Am I wrong or are kids more mature now at their age? The things they talk about, their expressions, the clothes they wear! Ok, I know, I'm beginning to sound like an old bag now. But I never had huge friendship problems in school. Like Zara, I switched schools at the age of 9 as well. Besides being overly nervous when I started, I ended up having an awesome group of friends and we all thought we were too cool for school. Zara recently had some trouble with a friend at school. My protective mother instincts kicked in and I started giving her advise on how to cope with the snide remarks in school - positive thinking, avoid the negative energy and play with someone new, etc, etc. In the midst of my psycho self-help-book babble, Zara said, "Mummy stop! I wish it was all easier!" I gave her a hug and we never spoke about it eversince. I got the hint that I was probably overwhelming her.
My girlfriend sent me an article recently and then it hit me like a ton of bricks! I've been doing it all wrong! All those books I have read and I didn't even see it! In the article, Carrie Goldman talked about how we ask questions make a whole difference to how our kids view the world. We can lead them to focus on the positives no matter what a downer their day can be! A simple question like, "What's the best thing you did today?" made a whole lot of difference. So simple and so much change in the after-school conversations we've been having. And it also makes me think about what the best part of my day was because we all know that we always forget to give ourselves the same "best" as we give our kids. And sure Zara will have good days and bad days. But being the amazing girl that she is, I know she will give her best shot at everything.
Ju'eta....xox
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