What I Learned When My Junior Kindergarten Daughter Got The ‘Most Dramatic’ Award
I was standing by the picnic table at Lila’s end-of-year JK celebration, holding a mustard-stained paper plate with half a lukewarm hot dog, when her teacher got on the portable mic to hand out the silly end-of-year superlatives. My husband wandered off to grab extra napkins, and I was half-watching a group of kids roll down the grass hill covered in rainbow snow cone syrup, when I heard it: “Most Dramatic goes to Lila Mae!” I snort-laughed so hard I dropped my hot dog bun, and Lila came bounding over the grass, pigtails flying, and curtsied so deep her nose almost touched her shoes before she grabbed her certificate and posed for a picture grinning like she’d just won an Oscar.
I’d joked for months that she’d win that award, but standing there, I got that little flicker of parent panic. Is this actually a problem? Is she the kid other parents whisper about? Will her teachers get tired of her big displays before she even hits senior kindergarten? After the picnic, I hung back to talk to her teacher Ms. Rosa, who’s been teaching early kindergarten for 20 years, so I figured she’d tell it to me straight.
Ms. Rosa leaned against the playground fence, sipping her iced coffee, and said it’s one of her favorite superlatives to give out, because everyone always assumes it’s a bad thing, but it’s actually the opposite. Most 4- and 5-year-olds can’t put words to what they’re feeling. They hit, or shut down, or run away when they’re upset, because they don’t know what else to do. Lila’s dramatic displays? She’s just practicing. She knows she feels something big, and she’s testing out how to show it, how to name it.
I went home and thought about that, and started noticing all the little things I’d brushed off as annoying drama. When her friend Mia knocked over her block castle two months ago, Lila collapsed on the rug, fanned her face, and wailed “my heart is broken into a million tiny crumbs and I will never build again.” I’d rolled my eyes a little then, but Mia—who’d felt terrible about knocking it over—stopped crying, sat down next to her and said “I can help you glue the crumbs back together.” Last week at the park, a little boy fell off his bike and everyone kept playing because his mom was already running over, but Lila left her swing mid-push to go sit with him and tell him she knew exactly how bad a scraped knee hurts, because she’d scraped hers the week before and “it hurt so bad I thought I would cry for a whole year.” That’s empathy, isn’t it? She can feel big things, so she can see big things in other people.
Before that picnic, my default response when Lila would blow up over a tiny thing—like me cutting her toast into squares instead of triangles, or her shoelace being tied too loose—was to say “it’s not that big of a deal, calm down.” I thought I was teaching her not to overreact. But what I was actually doing was telling her her feelings didn’t matter. Now I do three small things that take almost no extra time, and it’s made a huge difference for both of us.
First, I just name the feeling back to her, no dismissal. If she’s upset her toast is cut wrong, I say “You really wanted triangles today, and this feels so wrong and upsetting. That makes sense.” No push to get over it right away. Just acknowledging that the feeling is real takes away so much of the edge. Second, I gave us a low-stakes outlet for the drama: the 2-minute drama break. If she needs to wail, or collapse, or do a whole big number about how terrible everything is, she can, and I set a timer on my watch for 2 minutes. When the timer goes off, we move on to whatever is next. It sounds silly, but for her, it takes away the pressure of me telling her to stop, and it also means the drama doesn’t derail our whole morning. Last week she couldn’t find her favorite sparkly shoes for preschool, did her whole 2 minutes of wailing on the hallway rug, then stood up wiped her face and said “okay, can I wear the pink ones instead?” Third, I stopped labeling her as dramatic in front of her. I used to joke with other parents “sorry, she’s just our drama queen” and I noticed she’d hang her head and go quiet after I said that. Now I just say “she’s feeling really upset about this right now” and save the funny award stories for when she’s not around.
It doesn’t always go smooth. Last month we were in the checkout line at the grocery store and she dropped her cherry slushie all over the floor, and she immediately collapsed against the shelf of candy bars and started sobbing. An older woman waiting behind me gave me that look—the one that says “can’t you control your kid?” I used to apologize profusely and yank her up, but this time I just knelt down and said “Do you need your 2 minute drama break here, or do you want to help me clean this up and get a new one?” She chose the break, so I stood there and let her sob for a minute while the bagger got a mop, and when the time was up she stood up, wiped her face on my sleeve, and said “let’s get a new one.” The woman still looked annoyed, but that’s okay.
Last night I leaned into Lila’s bedroom door and found her putting on a play for all her stuffed animals. She was the wronged queen whose bowl of popcorn had been stolen by the evil teddy bear, and she was delivering a very dramatic speech about how her whole kingdom would mourn the lost popcorn forever. I didn’t go in and tell her to keep it down, or that it was just popcorn. I just stood there and watched for a minute.
We still don’t know if all this drama means she’ll end up on a stage one day, or if she’ll grow out of the 2 minute wailing breaks when she hits elementary school. Some days it’s still tiring, and some days I still have to bite my tongue from saying “it’s not that big of a deal.” But the “most dramatic” award wasn’t the wake-up call I thought it would be. It was just a reminder that for little kids, big over-the-top behavior isn’t always a problem to fix. Sometimes it’s just practice. Right now, letting her practice feels like the right thing to do. We’ll see how it goes.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What I Learned When My Junior Kindergarten Daughter Got The ‘Most Dramatic’ Award