Is anybody else's child like this?

[SoulCakes]

Hey all, pretty new to the forum here.

Part of the reason I joined was to get some perspective on my daughter. She's four (will be five in late February), and a total delight. But we've had some moments lately with her teachers that I wasn't expecting. Basically, Maddie has no sense of "I must do 'x'". For example, this is her first year in Waldorf kindergarten (and her only year - I felt it was too early to begin formal learning like she would be in a mainstream school, which she'll be starting next fall), and during circle time, once she loses interest, she'll just... wander off. This frustrates her teacher to no end, and her teacher now wants to meet with me after Christmas break to discuss our "options". It's not that she's overexcited, say, and disrupting the class, or even that she can't pay attention. She doesn't have any attention problems at home. It's just that once she's done with something, she doesn't get that she's still supposed to sit tight until the activity is done.

Ballet, though, is the worst! I mean, it's really bad. She loves the idea of ballet, and she's a charm for the first fifteen minutes or so. And then, again, she's done. She'll start marching around on her hands and knees, pretending to be a kitty, and she'll watch herself dance her own dances in the mirror, completely ignoring the teacher. It was so bad the last time that the other girls were like, "Why doesn't *she* have to dance with us?!" The teacher just sighed and told them to ignore her. I nearly cried! That was our last session - she clearly isn't ready for organized dance lessons and it's not fair to her teacher or the other, better-behaved children (some of whom are younger, btw) for her to be disrupting the class.

I truly do not believe she has any attention problems. She's certainly full of energy, but I've seen her exert self-restraint when she's needed to and she can pay attention to a game/coloring/project/pretend-play for far longer than I would expect of a child her age - when she *wants* to. It's just that she doesn't see why she has to continue with an activity past her interest's expiration date. And I... I don't know whether I'm supposed to push her or not. Obviously I don't want her disrupting her classes, but I don't want to squash her into a box so early in her life. On the other hand, I don't want her getting a bad image of herself (as "uncontrolled", "disruptive", as the "bad kid") so early either, because those initial self-impressions stick with us for so long throughout our lives.

Sigh. I'm just frustrated. Please, someone tell me that this is relatively normal. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one out there with a non-conformist kid. (Seriously. I swear all the other children seem so well-behaved!)

Edit: I want to add a few things: namely, we don't have any problems at home. She's reluctant to pick up after herself, say, but generally she does as she's told and there aren't any behavior problems. Secondly, she's a happy kid, so there's no anger/sadness/aggression to factor into the equation. She just dances to beat of her own drum.

[alexsam]

I knew another little girl like this and honestly, the mom just kinda stopped doing things that required the group stuff. She was/is a great mom and very positive about her daughter, but recognized that the daughter's lack of interest or desire (and possibly ability) to do group things just made the dynamic surrounding her very negative. So she stopped signing her up for things like that and explained it as "a bad fit". It required an enormous amount of patience and her unwaivering support of her daughter (and lots of times when I'm sure she was embarassed or frustrated but handled it with as much grace as possible). But she just came to terms that she could either choose to accept her as she is/was and work with it and arround it or she could try to make her fit in to the "normal things kids do" and end up with a situation where everyone was hostile and her daughter had to contend with the negativity. She chose to accept her and just let the rest go. I'm sure it must have been hard, as I'm sure she had been imagining swim lessons and art lessons and preschool, but those didn't happen. But what she DID end up with was a daughter people felt positively about and their relationship was good because she was not set up for failure or frustration.

Time helped. By 5 or so, she was able to do enough to have a positive experience in a 3 hr pre-K program. She was also able to manage through short periods of expected behavior. However, she still kind of "moves to a different drummer" and requires advocacy and creative arrangements by her mom. She is bright, articulate, playful, smart, creative, interested, connected and funny. She just doesn't give a whit for any expectations or do what people ask of her and does whatever she wants whenever she wants in her own kind of "zone" .

[Sierra]

Some kids have a harder transition into the group stuff. Most kids by three, or four, or five can do some amount of age-appropriate group stuff so long as the teachers are good, but some kids just take a little longer. My 3 (almost 4) year old may have special needs related to attention and my 4.5 year old has developmental delays, but both are able to sit through and participate in circle time and class activities *as long as I am not there* at church school, etc. Still, my younger brother who has grown to get along fine as an adult had an awful transition to school. My mom homeschooled him during kindergarten because she knew he wasn't ready, but in first grade he even had a tantrum when he lost a game of bingo and it was so bad my mom had to be called in.

So, it could be on the spectrum of normal, I think. I would also encourage you to look at some of the discussions here on Waldorf concerns. Just for example...
Waldorf Questioners/Concerns Thread
Criticisms of Waldorf?
Questions About Waldorf

The reason I recommend this is not to question your education decision to enroll your child in Waldorf, but rather to help prepare you for this meeting that you will be having with your child's teacher about your options. In my experience from a number of Waldorf families I know well, there is a good chance at this meeting that your child's karmic position will be in question (labels will almost certainly be applied in private by the children's teachers even if they aren't discussed with you at the meeting) and/or an anthroposophical "doctor" will be recommended (you may even be told the child must see such a doctor or school enrollment may be denied), and/or it will be recommended that your child repeat this grade. All of the above may be problematic for your child from several angles, and it is important to be prepared.

[cappuccinosmom]

That is totally my 4 yo boy. It's the combination of personality and the age. Makes life interesting.

I like to joke that my 4 yo got kicked out of Vacation Bible School. And he did. He just couldn't stick with the program, poor thing. So I kept him home for a day. Interestingly, he *chose* to do what was necessary in order to go back for the remaining 3 days, after I told him what was required. He pulled himself together and made a huge effort because he felt the fun was worth it.

We've started homeschooling but in a very limited way. 15 minutes max of sit-down time, gradually working up over the next year or two. He knows all the stuff in K4, but he finds the sitting down incredibly boring and has absolutely no patience for the fine motor skills practice.

He is also a very compliant kid at home. Very sweet, no real problems. But he does tend to "wander" off, physically and mentally. He usually needs direct eye-contact with me to recieve and process any instruction or direction from me.

I'm very interested to watch this kid grow up. He's totally fascinating. And I think both your kid and mine are well within the range of the human norm.

You mentioned "better behaved" children. I wouldn't phrase it that way. Some people are just not suited for regimented and highly organized activities. It's important to learn to be able to work with those things as adults, just to get by in the world, but not being wired to do well at that stuff doesn't equal bad behavior. I think you're wise to back off on that sort of thing for a while. You can work on it gradually with her. She has plenty of time, and if she doesn't have behavior or attention problems, then you may find that if she finds something that is *really* important to her, she'll pull it together all on her own because she's decided the benefit outweighs the bother of following another drummer temporarily.

[BellinghamCrunchie]

My DD is very much like that. She just turned 5 today. In preschool, circle time is no longer than 10 minutes - she can do that pretty easily. Ballet was a disaster. There's way too much "boring" stuff like stretching, waiting your turn, following directions without much movement going on, etc. DD does much, much better in gymnastics.

Especially when they are so young, I think its better to follow their lead rather than force a curriculum on them just yet.

I think its good that our DDs seek out the stimulation and interaction they need, and move away from being bored. I'm not sure that tolerating boredom is a skill that is needed just yet. Maybe in a couple years, and then the ability to tolerate boredom can be developed with socially-acceptable coping strategies (I used to bring a paperback book to read hidden inside my math book, for example, and I learned to daydream while at the same time being alert for being called on).

[MCR]

Dd can be just this way, she will be 5 in the New Year.
She will wander off from circle time, but they have more than one teacher in the room and usually can engage her and send her back. She gets really into doing something, and will do it day after day (like learning to read right now) Then one day refuse to join in with me and read/play. She stopped doing any reading games right before Christmas I have let it go. She loves groups but will go off on a tangent and do something that catches her attention instead.
Dh would like her to go to Kung Fu class for the exercise and discipline But I don;t think she's ready to pay attention for 30 minutes at a stretch as there are other things going on around and she'll want to go and take a look and talk about it.

[nathansmum]

My dd is a month younger than yours and she's the same. Once she's done, she's done. Even when wee friends are over to play who she likes and enjoys spending time with - once she's done with something she'll just wander off and do her own thing by herself. Not because she's upset or frustrated - it's just who she is.

I signed her up for gymnastics in September (the first structured thing we have done) and she really got into it and would follow through as required. Starting in February she will be moving up a class where I won't be down on the floor with her or guiding her around and keeping her where she's meant to be and she'll need to be following the teachers instructions etc, so that will be interesting.

We unschool, so in regards to other things, it works well for us and she can move on in her own time.

[meemee]

totally developmentally appropriate.

dd loved ballet but at that age, she totally got bored when she had to wait her turn and would make faces in the mirror or do pantomime. i took her out. my dd was a doer. soccer was more up her alley than ballet.

i am surprised by the waldorf reaction. i know kids who are in dc at that age were totally given permission to do something else if they didnt want to join in circle time or that activity.

it seems to me your dd might do well in montessori. i cant see 5 making things any different. i had no choice but public school. my dd instead of misbehaving took time off to daydream.

[SoulCakes]

Thanks to everyone for your replies! I feel much more reassured now - sometimes it really can seem that my daughter is the only strong-willed child in the bunch. I try to remember that with that personality comes many qualities that will make her an interesting, strong, vital adult.

I think we're going to switch to a mainstream school before the end of the year. She simply isn't stimulated in any meaningful way, and now that we've been at Waldorf for a while I can definitely tell that she preferred her old "reading and writing" preschool (they only learned letters and numbers, nothing hardcore at this age) to the Waldorf style.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who chimed in! I really appreciate it.

[~Boudicca~]

Oh yes that sounds like dd1!

Ballet was hysterical for everyone except the teacher. She (my kid), um, danced to a different drummer for sure. She had an idea of what ballet was like but when she actually got into a class she could not understand that there was a certain way of doing things that did not include her standing in front of the class and twirling endlessly. Yeah, we gave that up after about 3 months. Her attention span couldn't handle it.

Now at almost 7, she still has her flighty moments which isn't odd for anyone at all because we are homeschooling. It's just the norm around here.

[jillmamma]

Thanks for making me feel better about my DD too! She is 4y4m (5 in August), and does a lot of the same stuff. I started her in gymnastics and preschool right when she turned 3, and at first she had a LOT of trouble paying attention, listening, doing as instructed, staying with the flow, etc. But I have noticed over the past year and a half as she has matured, her ability to do those things has improved too. She is in prek-4 this year and we plan to send her to public K next year. She has her moments where she will just tell us or her teacher that "I don't WANT to do xxx", but if you work with her and explain things, and sometimes just let her know that is how it HAS to be, we can get through to her. Like if it has been 3 hours since she went potty and mommy says she needs to go, but she does not want to, mommy is pretty insistent that we go so that we don't have to clean up wet clothes and floor. If she does not want to pick up toys, then mommy explains that we need them picked up so they don't get broken and people don't get hurt stepping on them. Also, if mommy has to pick them up, mommy will keep them put away for awhile. So explaining consequences helps some (although not much with the whining about it). I think it is just something that they go through and gets better as they mature and learn more about how the world works.

[NellieKatz]

OMG did the OP make me laugh with joy and recognition! My son is that way ALL the way, but that's because he's been a self-directed learner since birth and we're homeschooling/unschooling. He is 6 now.

I have a very dim opinion of organized school for this reason. (read Peter Grays' articles on self-directed learning; you can Google him) and also read John Holt's "How Children Learn" and "The Underachieving School" among others. Bottom line: kids learn best when THEY follow THEIR interests. Case in point-- my son stays up till nearly midnight because he gets his creative surge after bedtime book-reading is done. He will be up all night studying musical instruments and drawing them (it has been this way with everything including chemistry and mollusks and astronomy...whatever his passion is). But the minute I try and decide for him what I am going to teach him, he tunes out and things become very impossible. It does get frustrating but I have SEEN how interested and focused he is when he is interested in something.

I know you have chosen to put her in school, but I honestly felt a sense of dread for her, because your instincts are right about this...I have a feeling she would get "squashed in a box" as you say, labeled, called "difficult", having her self-image tarnished and made this all about behavior. I think that would be a shame because school SHOULD be about learning (but often ends up being about conformity just because there are so many kids in the system), and your daughter sounds like a delightful and very determined little self-directed learner! She can accomplish great things if she is left to her own devices (and exposed to the things she needs to learn on HER timetable).

I'd love to chat off line if need be. I feel so passionate about this topic. Good luck with it. She sounds like a joy.

[NellieKatz]

I got off on a tangent. To answer your original question, yes, my son does this. An example is Kung Fu. We got a free trial class and were SO impressed with the teacher and how he dealt with my son (and my son found it fun) that we signed up. They are very big on self-respect and discipline and we thought this would be very good in many ways. Not only that, once a month they have a "Parents Night Out" where we can drop off the kids and they play all kinds of team games, etc. and we go out for 3 hours (no added charge) and my son LOVES this!

But now we are coming up to a dilemma....the session we paid for (X number of months) is ending soon, and my son has told us that he is bored with Kung Fu. I can see it in his eyes. He does go along with the class, but he's sort of "phoning it in." His eyes wander, he fidgets. He doesn't care about the Kung Fu part. He likes the teacher, he likes being part of the group, he LOVES the play part, but he is not particularly interested in the Kung Fu part. It costs us a fortune to have him in that class, and he is an only-child homeschooler, so we REALLY love that he is in such a great community of kids. Hence the dilemma. If we don't renew, he will lose all the good stuff that is benefiting him, but if we do renew, he has to endure 6 or so months of very expensive stuff that bores him.

We still have not decided what to do.

A lot of the wandering off is age-related. For example, he still may WANT to wander off in Sunday School or Kung Fu, but he doesn't. There was a time not so long ago where he was simply not capable of "sitting there" because he's "supposed to." This influenced just what we signed him up for (not much!! LOL) Now that he is almost seven years old, he will stay seated or whatever the teacher is asking him to do.

But I wouldn't want to subject him to that every day, because soon the love of learning would be just stamped out of him, and replaced by a fair amount of frustration and anger, I'm sure. Kids are born to learn, they WANT to learn....until we find a way to wreck it for them.

Sorry to be blunt but I am living this first-hand. My son wouldn't sit still for my stupid coerced "reading lessons" and I used to despair he'd never learn to read. I gave up. Now, a year later, he's reading. I need to have more faith in him. It sounds like I have a lot, and I do, but even I get wobbly sometimes. :-)

[Kreeblim]

You have the little girl version of my 4 year old boy! I think my husband said it best..."He refuses to be anyone's monkey."

Example: We're picking apples from the yard, which he was initially super excited about because he LOVES apple pie. He lays in the grass and starts talking to a dandelion about bugs after about 3 minutes. I mention that we can't make pie until we get enough apples, and that his brother already has an almost full bucket. He casually replies "That's OK...he can have my pie." without even looking up.

Example: The kids have been practicing a Christmas song for WEEKS and both sing it in the car, at home, wherever and whenever. On Christmas day gramma asks them if they know any good songs (cuz I tipped her off) and he just says "nope" and walks off holding his plastic dinosaurs. I say "well what about Santa Claus is coming to town?" (the song they were practicing) and he just says, "nah, I don't know any songs." and continues to walk off.

I honestly figured he just wouldn't have the attention span for anything organised, but when I let him sit in on a karate class with his brother he stunned me by begging to join the class! He's the youngest there but absorbs everything and takes it totally seriously. He loves animals and hockey too but trying sports or zoo classes usually ended the same way your daughter's ballet classes did. It's likely that she'll grow out of some of it, but if you just give her lots of oppertunities she'll probably find her "thing". Having him beg to join the class, vs. just signing him up because I thought he'd like it seems to have made a big difference in what he does with the class.

[PreggieUBA2C]

You can see where my perspective is in my signature, but I wanted to just interject that in my family, we encourage one another to find things that occupy our minds and bodies when what we're doing isn't working anymore.

Granted we have a lot of ADHD/ADD in our family, and nobody here other than me can even tolerate boredom- it leads to destruction; think of a puppy-so we work with that reality.

Like your dd, our boys and my dh can hyperfocus on what interests them, but if it doesn't work because it never has or they are 'done', then that's how it is. I can see encouraging a bit of tenacity where it is needed, but overall, we change course.

We will not be using mass schooling though, so training our dc to sit still and endure boredom isn't a real necessity. They learn what they need to and with ease when it's according to their timing.Our eldest is only six yrs old, but so far, this has proven absolutely the most beneficial philosophy for us.

[brownskinchinee]

aren't most kids like that? my dd is like that too, she's 7 now and in school but it took me a long time to find the right school for her. she's in a performing arts school and she loves it, just the right mix of arts and academics for her. when she was younger though, she was always just doing her own thing. I can't tell you how many times I scheduled playdates where she ended up playing all byherself on the opposite end of the playground lol. I would just leave her alone, let her be. I'd just tell ppl, that's how she is, take it or leave it. Her teachers at school are great, best teachers I could ask for, we've been very lucky so far. They allow her to go off and do her thing when she really needs to but for the most part the schedule they have works for her.