Maddie at Børnehaven

We had our parent-teacher meeting at Maddie’s børnehaven yesterday and I thought I should note the discussion for the permanent record here.

Overall Maddie is doing very well.  Developmentally she’s right on track and she’s generally “a joy to have.”  She’s very bright and creative and takes a leadership role within her little group of friends (Alma, Astrid, and the infamous Harald-who-chews-like-this).  She’s very independent and appears to be very happy at børnehaven.

That much said, most of her virtues come with a dark side — her “leadership” within her clique, for example, though ordinarily accepted willingly and even sought by her friends, sometimes expresses itself too aggressively: she can be bossy and even mean.  (“We’re playing kitchen now.  I’m going to make some eggs.  Alma will bake some bread.  Harald will set the table.  There’s nothing for you to do, Astrid, so you should go away.”)  That is not so lovely, and we have already talked to her about that (and will continue to do so).

Her independence there, as at home, can sometimes manifest itself as pigheadedness and berserker behavior when she can’t do something she wants to do by herself — like when she was determined to teach herself how to snap.  The pedagogs took it the same way we have: it’s very admirable how determined she is, and how often her determination and persistence pay off, but it is sometimes hell to be around her while she goes through with it.

Also she’s a picky eater at børnehaven, as at home, but they actually seem to have an easier time of it getting her to eat her food than we do.  (And as one of them observed, the girl is a bundle of energy, running about madly from the minute she arrives until the minute we pick her up, so it’s not like she’s not getting enough nutrition.)  The problem appears to be more ours than hers: we let her snack too much (healthy stuff, but still) between her arrival home and dinner-time.  So we decided we would have a formal snack every day when she got home — it would be called snack-time and she would get one good snack — and then have to tough it out until dinner.

The pedagogs didn’t think any of these traits were unusual for her age, only that it was time to begin the work of reeling them in, and that work is already underway.

As for the girl herself, she continues to dazzle me with increasingly complex sentences, an astonishing imagination, and utter mastery of the iPad.

As for Molli Malou, she’s developing so rapidly right now that it’s hard to keep up.  I was sitting at work yesterday in the middle of the afternoon when the phone rang.

“Molli Malou,” the display said.

My heart leaped to my throat: she had never called me before except to try out her phone.  This couldn’t be anything good.

“Molli Malou?” I said.

“Hi, Daddy.  You should see the house I made in architecture.  I made it with all this sand and stuff.  It’s really cool.  I want you to come see it tomorrow.”

“You just called to ask me to see the house you built?”

“Yeah.  Tomorrow.”

If you ever wondered why Scandinavian design is so renowned, wonder no more: they start teaching architecture in second grade!

Architecture aside, Molli Malou is also thriving in all her many activities: swimming, gymnastics, piano, and chorus.  She is also a shrewd little entrepreneur and besides her weekly allowance of 20 kroner (for keeping her room neat, clearing her dishes from the table each night, and remembering to put all her dirty clothes in the laundry basket) she is always eager to find other little jobs she might do for a few extra kroner.  She has a little notebook she uses as a ledger, and some day when she’s not looking I’ll have to sneak my way to it and get a picture: she doesn’t get dates, but she writes the days of the week and what if anything she did and the amount of money she has earned.  It’s adorable.

Pictures will have to wait — as I said (either here or in an email), there aren’t many from Halloween, but I’ll post what we have… and probably some pictures of the house made of sand.