There hasn’t been much news this month, so I’m going to try and write more generally about some aspects of Ingrid’s personality this time. Specifically, the aspects that stand out and that I notice most, and those that have changed most over the past few years.
When Ingrid was about half a year old, someone described her as “strong, glad and active”. We hadn’t thought to describe or summarize her personality, but when we heard that description, we found it very apt. That is exactly what she was like. And the description remained applicable for years.
Now it really doesn’t fit any more. Strong she remains. But “glad and active” have been replaced by “surly and unimaginative”. Unlike some previous downswings, this has been going on for months, so it doesn’t seem to be a short-term negative phase.
Somehow, somewhere, she has lost the joy of doing things, the desire to be active, to create. Now she wants to be entertained instead, to consume. She used to like so many things: drawing and painting, writing, all sorts of crafts; jigsaw puzzles, singing, word games; helping us cook or bake, pick clothes for Adrian, take photos… Now she thinks everything is boring, and really only likes watching movies, listening to a book, and playing with friends – and any sort of activity where someone else (primarily Eric and/or I) provides the creative energy.
She will reject all suggestions to actually do anything as boring. She does not want to do any of the things that she used to enjoy. And when I do get her to participate in some sort of activity – painting or some sort of crafts – she seems to focus mostly on finishing and barely enjoying the process. She asks me to finish it because she “is tired” or because “you can do it faster mommy”. It’s more about getting it done than having fun. She optimizes for (what in my opinion is) totally the wrong thing.
She has no interest at all in joining us in things we do, whether it’s cooking, baking, emptying the dishwasher, raking leaves in the garden, going to the supermarket, or anything else. She perceives and notices the effort but not the joy of doing things.
She lost her creative drive, her imagination. She hardly ever draws, or sings, or makes up silly word games. And if she does draw it’s the same things as before, and when she does make up silly stuff it is silly stuff she has made up before. When we play games that require fantasy, she always wants to take the passive role. When we play the I spy game, or any other guessing game, she never wants to be the one to guess – she wants the role that doesn’t require any real effort. And if I want us to take turns, she suddenly doesn’t want to play that game any more. Eric and I now make a conscious effort to avoid such unbalanced games and choose ones where both players have to put in equal effort (such as ett skepp kommer lastat and so on). Even so, when it comes to the point where it gets a bit hard, where she needs to exert herself, she’d rather give up.
When we make up stories or pretend something, she wants me to come up with all the ideas. She can even be bored at Junibacken, or a swimming pool, and keeps asking “What shall I do now”.
Possibly related to this – she suddenly cannot or doesn’t like to make decisions any more. She wants us to choose clothes for her in the morning, to choose a plate and cup for her, to say what sweet she should have after dinner, to choose the book to read at night. But when we do choose she usually rejects our choice anyway, which gets pretty tiresome after a while. We now generally refuse to make the decisions for her, or if I do decide, I will not let her override it. Otherwise we are back to the usual routine – us contributing positive, creative energy and her either consuming it, or overriding it with rejection or negative comments.
I wonder how much of this is specific to Ingrid, and how much applies to most five-year-olds. I don’t know any other five-year-olds well enough to know.
I wonder how this came about. I wonder if it is a phase, whether she will outgrow it or whether we need to somehow help her out of it. (How do you teach someone to enjoy doing things?)
I also wonder if this is all somehow related to her being clever but not wise. She is ahead of her peers in cleverness (reading and writing and game strategy and planning ahead) but lacks wisdom and common sense. Has she in her cleverness “seen through” the “game”, decided that you “win” by getting the most done with the least effort?
Oliver (also five) will sometimes follow me around all day going “What shall I do now?” and nothing I suggest is cool (“äge” in Estonian). On the other hand, he can sometimes play on his own for hours creating a dinosaur zoo or some sort of elaborate game involving Hotwheels and robots, he has rather a lot of imagination. And he enjoys drawing, more than he used to. He most prefers for me to play with him taking part in the game he’s created and he mostly provides the story, saying for example: This is the lizard’s home and here is a crocodile who is a baddie and wants to eat him up, or sthg like this.