Poor Chris was supposed to come, and watch her for half days. (They had babysitting for half of the day) but he was feeling so rough and hardly been out of bed by that point we thought it better he stay home and recover rather than make the trip with us. So Gemma spent the whole day in childcare with people she didn't really know (except lunch hour with me). Friday she handled very well, but today she cried and cried until one of her regular babysitters from home showed up and took her away. In the afternoon they watched a movie so she was ok, but just clung on the lap of the sitter until I got there. The rest of the time even with me was hard, too, because everyone there is a friend and wanted to say Hi to her, and touch her hair, and be really friendly to her, and she just is not into that. Everyone was very understanding when I explained to them why she says 'No Touch!' and hides from that, so that was fortunate. I did my best to protect her and spent the whole evening Friday night and the whole bus ride home being very attentive to her and giving her lots of personal attention. I am happy she has boundaries and that she knows to say 'No' and stand up for herself.
Tonight we had a party to stop by at, and I just held her tight and tried to keep everyone away. She did warm up at the end; I think respecting her space allowed to get comfortable first and then she could come out a bit. She put on a great show for a friend's video camera, hopefully it will be up on facebook soon.
Parents need to protect their kids, on so many levels. This would be a great sentence starter for an essay. Our biggest challenge here is protecting Gemma's personal space. This picture is from our weekend at GreenBay; a picture of people taking a picture of Gemma.
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2 comments:
I hear you about protecting children from people, friends or not. When we would go to Yorkton to see James' parents his mom would try to make the boys say "Hi" to all her friends and the boys would shy away from them, Matthew more so than Harrison, and I would just say "That's ok you do not have to talk to strangers". James mom did not understand it and got quite upset at me. I told her that it is very contradictory to tell your kids to not talk to strangers, but force them to say hi to people that they don't know, aka strangers.
That's good that she knows she has boundaries and how to tell people no, there are too many kids that don't. Also if she knows she has boundaries she's more likely to catch on that other people do too. She sounds like one smart cookie :)
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