My daughter Caitlin never enjoyed being a baby. She cried a lot unless we held her upright so she could see what was going on around her. She knew in her little noggin what she thought she should be able to do – unfortunately her motor skills were not at the same level as her brain. Again and again she would try to put those bright colored plastic donuts on the cone, but her muscles were weak and her aim was off. Oh how she screamed in frustration!! When she was two she thought she should be able to write just like Mommy. She tried hard and when she found she couldn’t she threw the crayon across the room and crumpled up the paper. Because of this brain vs body thing, she would often not want to “perform” in front of others. She wanted to practice on her own. Even when she learned to crawl, she didn’t want anyone to know. I went out of the livingroom one day and when I came back she was in a different place. I was thrilled she was crawling but she would not do it in front of me no matter how much I called to her. So I tricked her – by putting my purse (something she loved) on the floor across the room from her. Then I  left the room. When I peeked around the corner I saw her crawling to the purse. She was startled when she saw me, but I gave her so much praise that from then on she didn’t hide her crawling. Another time I heard her tell the story of the Three Little Pigs over her baby monitor. She wasn’t talking much in front of me, but she knew the story and practiced it in her room. She was soon talking and using vocabulary beyond her years. She learned her colors early and was reading at a young age. It seemed that things involving the brain was easy. Things involving the body was not. It was the complete opposite of her younger brother. When he was four, he took the training wheels off his bike himself, jumped onto it and rode away. Caitlin took much longer. I remember practicing with her again and again. She was afraid of getting hurt and unsure of her body movements. Unfortunately, she did get hurt, BUT she kept trying and eventually learned to ride her bike. Yay!! Now she is in her early twenties and seems to be in the same frame of mind as when she was learning to ride that bike so many years earlier. Since graduating from high school she has been trying to get on her own, but it hasn’t been a great success. She has tried living different places and doing different things, but she keeps falling down discouraged. She can’t seem to figure it out –  how to make it all work. She will though. It’ll just takes practice – and someone beside her who won’t give up or let her  give up. That’s my job. I’ll do my best to keep her steady and going in the right direction. And it will be so exciting when I can let go and watch her race away confidently down the road of life. What freedom! What joy! I can’t wait!

26 Jun This entry was published on June 26, 2013 at 12:22 am. It’s filed under Uncategorized and tagged afraid, baby, bicycle, bike, brain, crawl, daughter, fear, hurt, life, mother, muscles, practice, smart, talk. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.