Pumpkin Pieces - it's a long story

See? Long. It's for me.
Macey loves preschool. She continues to expect me to leave as soon as I drop her off :) Her teacher gives me regular updates when I pick her up. It seems like she pays extra attention to Macey so I was getting a little concerned. But she's not disruptive or aggressive to others and she loves her teacher, so I wasn't overly concerned.  

A few days ago her teacher pulled me aside and told me Macey had some concerning behavior that day. They were making pumpkins, cutting them out and coloring them with oil pastels. Macey was doing hers, but couldn't quite get the tricky cuts. Her teacher said she would help somehow but Macey just got frustrated
and proceeded to carefully cut the pumpkin into teeny tiny pieces and then took them and threw them all away!
When she told me that, part of me wanted to laugh out loud, because that's dang funny. But the mature half of me realized she was telling me this to try to work through whatever issues made that happen. That's the part of me that really appreciates this awesome teacher.

I talked to Macey about it and together we made a pumpkin at home and took it to school to show her teacher. She even let me help her cut out the tricky parts. Then the next day I got a phone call from her teacher. She was calling to tell me she had discovered something. She was looking at Macey's immunization charts and realized she was only three! Her teacher had thought she was older and couldn't figure out why she couldn't do these age appropriate activities for older kids. I appreciated her phone call. I realized I regularly do this too; treat her like she's Cody's age, and it's not always fair even though I do know her age.

The next day Macey was so good in class. She was the only one who could draw an upper case and lower case f and they saved it to show me. She had a good day. Through this process I have realized, with her teacher's help, that Macey is very deliberate. If she decides to do something, she will do it. She doesn't love group activities at first. She is also very willing to change her behavior if given enough logical reason. (Another time at first she didn't want to sing songs with everyone else because she didn't know them. Her teacher spoke to me and I talked to her about it just being for fun, etc. and she thought about it. She decided she would do it and did, and loves it! She always sings this song "To the front, to the back, to the seesaw side.")

I love that I am learning more about how to be a better mother to Macey through preschool. I love that her behavior isn't viewed as negative in class, and it's just a learning environment in every aspect. 

While new things are sometimes intimidating to Macey, I am so proud of her for overcoming her fears and doing them. That takes courage. I do feel lucky to be her mom.

"It is the challenge of mortality to be a worthy and responsible parent." Boyd K. Packer