Hun Trives

That’s Danish for "she’s thriving," and that’s what Lene told us about Molli Malou at our parent-teacher meeting last night.

 

Apparently all the pedagogs from the class meet with eachother every three months to evaluate each child (each kid has one "primary" pedagog, but of course the other pedagogs share the responsibility for every child every day).  At these meetings, the pedagogs have a list of developmental areas that they run down for each kid: motor skills, social skills, language development, etc.  They talk about each kid’s performance in each area.  If they’re doing all right, they just write "ok."  If they think the kid needs a little boost in one area or another, they jot that down.  Then, when the primary pedagog meets with the parents, they run down the list and let the parents know what suggestions they have for each of the areas where the kid could use a boost.

 

Lene said they hadn’t even bothered writing "ok" on Molli Malou’s sheets, because they hadn’t seen any point in using the sheets: they all think she’s doing just fine in every area.  She is, as Lene said, simply thriving.  Lene also said Molli Malou seemed to be in a period of particularly rapid development right now, which supported Trine’s and my own observations. 

 

It’s not just that she’s putting more and more little sentences together, or expanding her Danish and English vocabularies so fast that (as I may have mentioned) she actually used a word with me on Saturday that I thought was gibberish until I looked it up in the Danish dictionary–and discovered it was a Danish word I didn’t even know yet.  It’s that she seems to understand so much all of a sudden.  You can actually pre-empt a temper tantrum by talking her down from something–sometimes.  (Other times, like when she’s on the thrity-fourth viewing of the Pororo the Penguin video, and you tell her there will be no thirty-fifth viewing, you’re still going to have to deal with a little tantrum.)

 

She doesn’t have any super powers, she’s not going to be composing piano sonatas any time soon, and she’s still not convinced coins aren’t hard candy.  But if you say "Ashes, ashes" to her (and she’s in the mood), she’ll run into the bedroom, climb onto the bed, stand up, spin around while shouting "ash, ash!" then hurl herself face down into the pillows.  (We played ring-around-the-rosie with her one night and to her the game now consists of screaming "ash, ash!" and falling down.)

 

She understands what "put that back" means (which isn’t to say she always complies).

 

If she asks for a particular food, you can talk to her about what you might be willing to offer instead, and actually reach a compromise.

 

She likes to take long trips around the apartment on her little plastic trike, and will blow you a kiss and say "buh-bye" as she rolls away from you… then ebulliently declare, "Hi, Daddy!" or "Hej, mor!" when she returns.

 

And the minute you get her outside, the first word out of her mouth is "Gå!"  ("Walk!")

 

It’s all little stuff, but it adds up.