Lurching through life

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We've been very busy with end-of-the-year stuff.

There are a couple of items I've been meaning to post about, challenges (though not severe challenges) with the girls. It's always easier to find the time to post about delightful accomplishments than things that puzzle me.

Madison lurches.

She's always lurched, to some extent. She was never what you'd call graceful; whereas Ella somehow seems to have built-in grace, Madison never has. You could always see the difference when they would make up a dance: Ella was a ballerina, Madison would look like she was stumbling through a demented hokey-pokey no matter what the background music. Madison never lacked for enthusiasm, though, and that's what made it all both better and worse. Better, because she is clearly happy and one doesn't want to stomp on her glee...but worse, because the more enthusiastic she is, the more ungainly she becomes, and the harder it is to watch her, especially in comparison with Ella.

I have always been convinced that Madison is klutzy because she has so much going on upstairs that she is focused inward rather than outward. But lately, as she nears the age of nine and is starting to grow, it's struck David and me that she has to start to get a grip on her body. She's been getting minorly hurt a lot more often, and lurching into other people and tripping them up. She doesn't just get up from the table, she hurls herself up from the table in pursuit of whereever she's going next. It's a standing family joke that the house attacks Madison -- corners, the floor, doors, furniture...she can hurt herself just trying to stand still somewhere. When she holds your hand as you're walking, YOU become her prop, the thing that is holding her upright. Instead of walking down- or upstairs, she winds her body around the banister and kind of slides toward her destination.

So we have lately undertaken to try to make Madison more conscious of her body. It's one thing for a little little kid never to stop talking and never to seem as though she is in control of her body...that can be kind of cute. But it's getting less cute. You'd think a year and a half of karate would have helped. Not much. She's not bad at karate--but that's when she's actually focused on what her body is supposed to be doing, so it works ok. But it's as though she reserves all of her focus for Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and she's free from constraint the rest of the time.

So we've tried to be positive about it. She *never* remembers not to lurch, so we've taken to reminding her at times before she's about to move. She'll be about to get up from the table, and I'll remind her, "Elbows, knees, and spine." "Like a princess, love." "You're going to have to use your own spine to hold yourself up, honey, or you're going to fall."

We have noticed it kind of -- KIND OF -- starting to work, after about two weeks of calling after her ping-ponging little body, "Stop lurching!" I'm not sure, though, what kind of effect we've had, or whether we even ought to do this at all. Maybe we should do it later? Maybe there are more important things we should worry about instead? Maybe we should be using a different approach? Maybe she's just a klutz and we should embrace her for "who she is"? Sigh.