One of the truly crappy things about coming back from vacation (aside from the fact that I had to come back from vacation) is that period where I need to get back up to speed with work and other commitments. Such as it is that the post I intended to work on and finish up last week is instead getting posted today. Whoops.
So anyway, vacation is done. It was a good time, all told. We had a good time with both of our respective familes, Brady got to hang out with her various cousins, and (most importantly) we had a chance to relax and reset.
Actually, that's not quite true. I think the most important thing to come out of the trip was an increased sense of perspective on how we're doing as parents. See, when you're 2,500 miles away from family, you’re essentially raising a child in a vacuum. Sure, there are neighbors and other parents in town that you could always use for comparison, but it's not quite the same. This is especially true when you think that your child is insane compared to all of the other kids in town.
I use the term lovingly, because I love the type of manic energy that Brady posesses (90% of the time, at least). But compared to other kids that we interact with in town, she always seemed really out there. We would wonder if we were doing something wrong in how we were raising her. I mean, other children seemed to be well behaved. What were we doing wrong?
Turns out we were doing nothing wrong. She's just a Hills. Or, despite being born and raised in Utah, she's really a New Yorker at heart.
Back on the East Coast, Brady seemed to fit right in. She was no more or less crazy than any other kid we ran into on the trip. More telling was seeing some of my other nieces and nephews, and noticing that they are just as extroverted as she is. Sometimes even more so.
Have we been overreacting or over-worrying about how Brady is, and how we raise her? Well, yes and no. I guess what I learned was seeing how Brady is in proper context. Here in Utah, there does seem to be this feeling that everything has to be “perfect,” whatever that is. Families around here seem to have no problems with their kids. Or at least they don't let others see it if there are problems. So, when we se Brady act like, well, Brady, it seems to stick out pretty far in comparison to our surroundings. But when in New York, she seemed no different than other kids her age.
So, should we be concerned? I don't believe so. In the grand scheme of things (as was reinforced by both sets of grandparents), Brady is behaving like a seven year old. She's says please and thank you. She's excitable, but not destructive. She wants to do everything and anything, which is no different than what Stacey and I were like when we we her age.
In other words, she's fine.
And really, would we want to suppress that in her, so that she’ll conform to how people are around here? Do we as parents want to conform?
Not really, no.
We want our daughter to have this active imagination (of which she has in abundance). We want her to be excited about things. Hell, deep down we want her to get in trouble from time to time. We don’t want her to feel that she has to be this perfect child.
Because in the proper context, she already is.
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