Seeing my nearly 4 year old daughter Shayla develop is a priceless experience! As I watch her cognition take on a life of it's own as her mind plays connect-the-dots with the reality around her I realize that I am starting to have conversations with the person that she is becoming, and it is with so much joy, pleasure and excitement that this is happening!
Our conversations are starting to take on a life of their own with her having a full and comprehensive awareness of the past, present and future of time and me, having the ability to take advantage of that and talk with her in a way that employs more mental depth and width of the subjects broached. What a gift this is! This is a person who's diapers I have changed and whose butt I still have to wipe from time to time, but what do you know!? Time still ticks on as her system continuously and tirelessly keeps developing and changing and before I know it we'll be discussing what she's doing on Saturday night and whether or not I'm going to lend her the car keys for the evening.
For now, having real conversations with my daughter is tickling me to no end and I am fully absorbed in this new development. I have no desire to rush time or to push on the process. There are moments when I wish some things would move along a little faster, if only to get 'through' a certain phase that is frustrating for me. Yet, I am not so naive as to think that there will not come a day when I will look back on these little struggles with a fondness that I do not always have now, and wish that I could turn back the hands of time. Be that as it may, we still must be who we are, as we are, in the present. Part of all this, I think, is the imparting of wisdom through the process of time: my wisdom in my time. If it were meant to be any other way, well then, it would be. Just as youth is not really 'wasted' on the young, wisdom is naturally meant for those with years because it takes time to earn the stripes of such. It is the natural way and order of time.
Being a parent has an unspeakable effect on your own personal evolution and development as a human being. There are parts of it that you love and parts of it that make you face things about yourself that you have never faced because you've never had to and to a large part, that you never even knew were there. It's a Dawning in the World of the self, and a Big One. It's the biggest one this daddy has ever faced.
Waves of complex, deeply hued Joy well up around me and come crashing down from within and without from time to time totally unannounced and unbidden and it is this wholistic, multi-colored bliss that shows the True Power and Magnitude of the Loving Intelligence Behind The Process of Creation.
This Wonder puts everything in perspective and sets everything aright.
So on we go one day at a time, one step at a time, one developmental phase at a time, one right after the other, right on down the line. We take it all together: the laughs, the cries, the frustrations and the joys. What settles out? Joy and Love, over and over again, Triumphant!!
God Bless The Children.
My baby girl is almost 4. During this age they start to transition away from regular nap taking. Recently we tried taking naps out of the daily routine schedule since we were having difficulty getting her to bed And Asleep before 10:30-11:00 at night. We think we have found a possible compromise in allowing her a nap that has a time limit on it. We used to let her sleep until she awoke on her own, but that worked out to be 2 to 2 1/2 hrs. as a common occurrence. This is just too long for our little girl as she then has difficulty being put down for bed around 9. She would then stay awake and sing or talk to herself in bed until 11 or so--too long.
Hopefully this will solve our quandary and give our daughter the proper sleep she needs without throwing the household schedule out of whack.
