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The Spirited Child

Lately I have been trying to read "Raising Your Spirited Child" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. It has been helpful, mostly in reassuring me that 1) Eleanor is more spirited than most, and 2) she's within the bounds of normal. Ever since she was a baby she has been demanding, energetic, intense, and so on. I remember that my brother and sister-in-law would come over to walk her around the house from 10 tomidnight for her first 8 weeks. She started climbing things before she could walk.

So far I've read the descriptions of the temprament traits that determine spiritedness---intensity, persistence, sensitivity, perceptiveness, adaptability, regularity, energy, first reaction, and disposition. Eleanor is higly intense, sensitive, perceptive, energy and irregular. She's just average in persistence, adaptability, first reaction and serious disposition. So when I send her up to get dressed in the morning and she ends up looking out the window for 10 minutes instead, that because she's very "perceptive". The fact that she won't eat anything I make for her (unless it has cheese in it) reflects her "sensitivity" to smells and tastes. This is useful, but I really can't wait to see how I actually make her get dressed and eat breakfast before she needs to go to school...

It does make me feel better to know that some of the reasons I find my husband attractive are precisely these temprament traits that are so very annoying in a 5 year old. His parents seem to have survived the adventure of raising him, which also gives me hope. Luke is clearly headed towards being a "spirited child" (he should be crawling within a few weeks...) but I had been congratulating myself on the fact that Amanda was clearly more laid back. Then I realized that although Amanda is less constantly in motion than Eleanor, she has quite a few of the spirited temprament traits... I think I'm in for an interesting time.

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