Maybe I Need to Clarify

I feel the need to defend my daughter here, before I expose her. And I get the chance to boast a little.

When I went to her second grade parent-teacher conference a couple of weeks ago, I learned she made the honor roll. Here are a few other things the teacher said,

"Your daughter is very smart."

"She is a leader, not a follower."

"Boy can she tell a story! She will go on and on, and if she's not done before recess she'll come back in and pick right back up where she stopped. Her level of detail and vocabulary are impeccable for her age. She's going to be a great writer."

"Your daughter and son are some of the sweetest children in the entire school."

OK, I'll stop. But when you've been through all we've been through in the last year, and believe me - the sibling infighting does increase a little during rough roads, and it takes extra effort to try to keep everyone level and sane during all the change surrounding divorce. So to get this level of praise was extra rewarding, and relieving.

I was going through my daughter's weekly work that comes home every Tuesday just now. I always learn amazing things - like that she knows what the word antonym means and can apply it on worksheet questions or that she is getting more complex understanding of math word problems. This week, on one section of a worksheet she had to choose verbs from a word bank and fill them in to sentences with missing verbs. Here's one mix up she encountered that made me laugh out loud:

Mom examines us home after school.

My doctor drove me carefully when I have a checkup.

I guess she's got the whole mom/doctor thing mashed up in her head. What on earth do I do that makes her feel examined? Sure, I scrutinize her bumps and rashes at night on occasion, but that's at her request after bedtime is long over - I think it's one of those "what can I think of to continue to engage mom as long as I possibly can" tactics. Or is she thinking of my incessant and sometimes pleading questions about her day and how it went and "tell me something good" and "tell me something bad." I'm not always so insistent but I just love hearing about her day, and try to create questions around bedtime and dinnertime to get her going. Maybe she feels overly scrutinized. But isn't that what we mom's do? Hold up the magnifying glass under the bright sun and hope your kid's head doesn't start smoking?

She's quite healthy and with her mom and dad both being doctors, she hardly ever goes to one. So she was probably really stumped on that one.

Anyway, I can't wait for breakfast. I'm thinking maybe I need to clarify.