She is not me when I was her age, she is Willow at her age. She has her own strengths and needs.

Wanna know what clinched it for me? This morning before work/uni, A told me that Willow said she had been to the educational psychologists office at school and helped him feed his fish. Of course, I wonder what happened, did she do something wrong, etc. A spoke to the educational psychologist and apparently Willow decided to go with another student who was being ‘given some space’, to keep him company. That’s the kind of girl she is

Yes, he needs a hair cut.

This is how we hang it up.

The proportions.

Willow at one day old.

To this:

Willow yesterday:

This time five years ago, my gorgeous girl was 16.5 hours – we were on a post-birth high, amazed with the beautiful creature we had made.

This is my gorgeous daughter, Willow. She is at my Auntie’s, with her/my cousins after having gathered some eggs from their hens. We were on our way to Melbourne at this stage and she wanted to take some eggs with us, but my Auntie convinced her to take some hibiscus flowers instead.

As I’ve explained before, A has Adult ADD. He thinks that he possibly might have been diagnosed as a child, but that didn’t happen until he was in his early 20s.

So, the point of this post is to document the official point at which I began to worry that Willow has ADD of the inattentive type, as opposed to the hyperactive type. She has already seen a speech pathologist about her word finding issues, last year at school. Word finding issues is something that A had, and continues to have a problem with. When I’m tired or stressed I can’t remember the word I want to use, but Willow and A are like that all the time.

The other day she was trying to find the word ‘ice cube tray’ to use with her Nan – it was almost comical to hear her explain ‘the thing you put water in to make it get hard in little pieces’. The speechie said she once described a hose as a ‘water rope’. Amusing, but not good for her self esteem or social skills.

The difficulty is that a lot of the symptoms of ADD can be attributed to simply being a child. She could easily be said to have all of the symptoms below, but what 4, nearly 5 year old doesn’t?

* Has difficulty following instructions
* Has difficulty keeping attention on work or play activities at school and at home
* Loses things needed for activities at school and at home
* Appears not to listen
* Doesn’t pay close attention to details
* Seems disorganized
* Has trouble with tasks that require planning ahead
* Forgets things
* Is easily distracted

From here: Symptoms.

Perhaps I’m just being a paranoid mother, medicalising her and her behaviour? Perhaps her behaviour is completely normal for a child her age? She’s a girl, right, there are far fewer girls with ADD than boys. She’s never been so impulsive as to run off in car-parks. She’s a good girl. I should be worried about Dexie who goes like the clappers from dusk til dawn. Regardless, I’d like to learn some better strategies for dealing with her more frustrating behaviour.

I don’t mean to imply that there is anything wrong with A or Willow quite the opposite. Of the things I love about A is the way he thinks, that he doesn’t hold a grudge, his creativity, his sense of humour. ADD isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I need to educate myself now, as a parent.

So this is where I’m at.

We had planned to do very little today – it was A’s turn for a sleep-in, so I had put a load of washing on and hung it out while the kids played outside. I’d asked them to water Dexie’s lemon tree, so they were doing that while I went inside to put another load of washing on. Willow came inside to tell me “Mum, there’s a spider on Dexie’s back.” I was initially annoyed because I had things to do. Like put clothes away. Still, I went outside and had a look. And there was. A large black glob on his upper left back.

I flicked it off – squashing it didn’t seem like a good idea – and it landed on Harley, our cat. She was intent on sipping water from the tap and didn’t seem to be bothered with the spider on her. I had a look and it was then that I saw the vivid red splash on the spider’s back. Again, squashing it didn’t seem like a good idea, so I tried to scrape it off with a stick but by the time I picked one up, the spider was no-where to be found.

For the rest of the morning, my skin crawled.

I had gone back down to the lounge room but he didn’t follow. Later when I went to get Willow a drink, I checked on him and this is what I found.

I love the curled up hand.

If it was showing next Wednesday and it wasn’t such a mindfuck, I’d be tempted to swap my day off…

Guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD now – can’t even acquire it by less than legal means.