Flip-flop

On the subject of "no child's character being set in stone -- REALLY":

Lately, I am noting -- to my shock -- that my girls seem to have flip-flopped on their approach to reacting and over-reacting.

Madison and Ella were born 20 months apart. About 20 months ago, when Madison was 7, if there was anyone who was going to over-react to a situation, it was Madison. No question. Once the child got going, she found it difficult to stop. Things would spiral downward, she would make the situation worse and worse (almost, it seemed, on purpose), and draw increasingly hysterical conclusions until either she ran out of steam or one of us adults somehow broke through to her.

Ella would look on at Madison's scenes in wonderment, and quietly ask me why Madison would do such things. She never would, she said. She could see clearly how Madison was making it worse.

I thought it was that Madison was passionate and Ella not so much. Really, I did. I thought it was a character trait, and that this was the way it was going to be.

Ha.

So now, it's Ella's turn. Wow.

Now it's Madison who sits watching, calmly, while Ella throws herself into a fit. Her passion and fire in these are absolutely equal to what Madison was doing 20 months ago. One small difference: Ella is much, much funnier...though not on purpose.

When Madison used to do this, her mode of expression was screaming hysterical accusations and conclusions at us. You could almost see the wheels of imperfect logic spinning wildly out of control in that little brain. Ella doesn't do this: What Ella does, when she's being teased or criticized, is she decides to take umbrage--and threatens that she is going to do something outrageous in response. She then proceeds to do it, to the hilarity of all watching. For example, about a month ago she threatened to take off all of her clothes, she was that mad, and then proceeded to do it. I wasn't there, but David just about split a gut laughing. So this incident gave rise to a new expression in our house: "Clothes-removing mad."

Unfortunately for poor Ella, subsequent outbursts have resulted in more such phrases: "Table-body-surfing mad" and "Chair-moving mad" are just a couple. Last night, she generated a new one, I'm afraid: "Running-away-to-Mexico mad." She actually made it out the door, though only to the back yard. I refrained from pointing out that the back yard was north of the house, not southwest. (Later, at her request, we did a bunch of calculations about how long it would take her to run away to Mexico using various modes of transportation. After remembering that they speak Spanish in Mexico and that her Spanish wouldn't be up to snuff, she modified that to New Mexico--almost as far, and easier to get by.)

The fact is, our laughing fit to bust at these outbursts makes her feel worse. Madder, of course. More upset. But we just can't help it.

My point is that what we thought was a character trait in Madison was actually a phase. The fact that Ella--our little go-with-the-flow distributor-of-sunshine Ella--is going through this now will be extremely useful in helping me keep an open mind as they go through other phases in the future. It reminds me of how labeling a kid--who is, by definition, in constant development--is probably a bad idea.