Trying to Look Backward from Here

When my daughter finished her latest growth spurt, I explained a theory about its significance to my friend. She suggested I write it down, not as an absolute, factual thing, but as an observation of my daughter, who we all know is a genius. So is her brother.

I came to Blogger to say goodbye to another blog about a non-existent charter school, so I though I might try to write down some observations about the kids here.

So, I'm going to start with the girl's growth spurt.

On Sunday, 2/21/10, at about 3 AM, the girl came into our room and said, "Someone's calling me." She's going to be three in three months and speaks very well. I put her back to bed. Not long after, she came back out of her room and pronounced: "I saw butterflies flying around." my husband put her back to bed. She came out again and this time, we kept her in our room. She didn't actually fall asleep for another half hour.

On Monday, 2/22/10, at about 1:45 AM, she came out and said, "Someone said my name." After putting her to bed, she came out again. This time, after putting her to bed, she promised to stay in her room.

My son, who is 22 months older, went through the same thing at about the same age. He said pretty much the same things, except he saw balloons in his room instead of butterflies (he loves balloons).

I predicted that she was going through a mental growth spurt and that her syntax... her sentence structure, would make a leap forward within a day and that's exactly what happened. I also had a theory, which made sense based on my son's progress, that she was recognizing her conscious thoughts. I remember that when our son went through this, he began to pretend more in terms of story and general imagination. I theorized that her brain (and his two years prior) made that connection, understanding the difference between what she saw with her eyes and what she could see with her mind.

I could be wrong, of course. I'm no psychologist (although I have knowledge of general mental development from my Masters in Education).

We'll see what she does in the next few days. In the meantime, i'm going to try to think back in time to some of these neat moments in my children's young lives.