At three years old, she is quite forward in her ways. She knows what she likes and goes for it, and yet, she knows and accepts the consequences that result from her actions. I'm baffled and somewhat in awe that someone so young should be strong-willed and egoistic! She even has the audacity (not the sound software) to tell the father of a boy she likes at school that she, Amber Declan, likes Derek...dear God.
Last night we were at a party my school set up to celebrate the end of the school year. She saw a teenage boy who was Caucasian and she immediately smiled with twinkling eyes. I knew, she liked the boy! What a flirt. She took all of her three year old form to the said boy and asked for his name! I was appalled. My mouth still ache from being held open for the longest time. There I stood, frozen, as my daughter came up to a boy and asked his name...wearing, to what it may seem to her, the most beautiful smile she could ever conjure. See picture below!
At three years old, this all looks cute and endearing. I could even be a tiny bit proud, I suppose. What I'm undecided about it the future. What about when she is 13 and she comes up to a college kid asking his name? What would that say about her then? Worse, how would that reflect on my parenting? Do I stop her gall and ooomph now whilst she's at a tender age or do I let it blossom then snip it when she is older?
Do mommy birds teach their younglings to fly then snip their feathers when they've grown? Can you even unlearn what you've already learned? Is it possible to delete a part of you like how you do in a computer document and save it as a new one?
I watch my daughter grow into the woman that she is going to be and yet a part of me wonders, where do I draw the line? How free would I allow her to be? How much self expression does society accept as normal or tolerable? I grapple these concepts in my butter-finger hands and dread as well as impatiently await the future.
