Playing the heartstrings

It’s 6am and the house is blanketed in silent darkness. Through deep, much-needed, layers of sleep the woman’s subconscious alerts her to a disturbance. Something has changed in the blackness. She tenses, all senses searching for more information.

There! A muted sound, surely? She sits straight up in the bed, heart pounding, bleary eyes attempting to detect subtle variations in the little light available.

Oh.

‘Sweetheart, WHAT are you doing out of bed? It’s still not getting up time you know.’

Little Lady replies, ‘Well, it’s just that I love you so much, I really wanted to give you a hug and it woke me up.’

The moments of fear and disorientation fade, and what’s left is amusement and a little pride.

How does she do that? At 4 and-a-half years of age, how does she know so innately how to defuse a situation?

‘C’mere pet. One and a half hugs and then straight back to bed until getting up time, ok?’

This emotional intelligence is not new, but it surprises me every time. We’ve recently celebrated her learning to peel a banana all by herself. She sat down one morning and learned how to tie shoelaces more through stubbornness than dexterity. She and Little Man are bright kids, but she is streets ahead of him when it comes to understanding emotions – how to read them, how to soothe them, and how to take advantage of them!

The first real grasp of how clever she is in this way came about 6 months after Little One was born. When I went to tuck Little Man into bed, he asked why my belly was still so big even though there wasn’t a baby in it anymore. It was an emotional slap in the face. I thought I hid it well, explained that Mammy’s tummy needs some time to learn how to be small again and he was satisfied. With my brave face in place I went to Little Lady’s room to tuck her in to bed. She stood up, threw her arms around me and declared ‘Mammy, you are a beautiful princess and I love you!’.  I almost cried. It was the perfect thing to do, the perfect thing to say and somehow she knew it!

She’s got a real knack for cheering people up, for just throwing herself into a hug at exactly the right moment and she’s used her charms to get herself out of trouble at least once. To hear her telling a fussy Little One ‘It’s ok pet, you’re just having a tough old day, I’ll say a hug is what you need!’ is at once adorable and admirable.

I think overall, it’s moments like those that make me look at my kids with a kind of awe. We made those kids from scratch, and are so lucky to get to watch them learn and grow into fascinating people with diverse talents and quirks.

And even at 6am, I wouldn’t change a thing!