The positive moments have been more frequent this month, and the general tone of Ingrid’s life is a little bit less negative than before. In part I think the Christmas calendars are to thank: there is something new to look forward to every morning, and a new video clip to watch every afternoon. So she gets the entertainment she craves, and that keeps her in a better mood.

I’ve been making an effort to spend more “quality time” with her in the evenings. I am not very fond of the concept of quality time but when she is not interested in normal time spent together doing normal activities, then somewhat-artificial quality time is better than nothing. At the same time she is spending fewer afternoons with her friends. We used to have kids in our house two or three times a week; this week we haven’t had a single one. I’m not sure if it is a coincidence, or because of frictions in their relationships – or if this is less important now that she gets more time with me.

We also let her spend more time with “entertainment devices” – movies and iPad games – than before. Previously I’ve tried to limit screen time and asked her to find other activities instead, but we’ve pretty much given up on that. All it leads to is whining and complaining. Now I only say no to movies/iPad when it’s getting close to bedtime, so that she can get a chance to get bored and realize that she is tired.

We (Eric and I) do try to think of activities that impose an active role on both participants, so she cannot just coast along. We insist on taking turns when playing I spy or when drawing together. I refuse to make decisions for her when we’re doing crafts, or to finish the task for her when she gets bored – our recent projects have been really small but they’ve taken several evenings each. She has little persistence and is unwilling to expend any real effort on anything. I often have to remind her to slow down, to do things properly instead of rushing. For her it is more important to make many things fast, while I’d rather see her make a few but with care – regardless of whether she’s making gingerbread cookies or writing Christmas cards.

In creative activities and games she will reuse the same ideas over and over agains, and I’ve started rejecting those. No, we will not draw another princess in the Scribblenauts sandbox – you’ll have to come up with something new.

One small positive development is that she is more likely to choose iPad games instead of re-watching a movie. A virtual tea party on the iPad is a much more passive and lazy activity than a real tea party with her toy china would be – but she is at least doing something rather than just sitting and watching.

She still thinks that almost every activity is boring, and to most ideas and suggestions, her first reflexive reaction is negative. If things are not to her liking, she is immediately deeply disappointed and sour. Sometimes it feels like “nöööh” and “but whyyyyy” are the most frequently spoken words in our household.

When things are fun, she often overreacts in the other direction. She can’t let an activity be just simply fun – she has to squeal and force out a loud laugh and turn it into a performance.

She spends a lot of time reacting, and rarely listens or reflects. I get the impression that it is very rarely that she thinks about what she wants, what she likes, what our suggestions entail – she is governed by emotions. Or hormones, perhaps.

A more interesting development is that she is exploring the power of sneaking and of telling untruths. When dinner doesn’t meet her expectations, she tells us “I don’t like that”. You still have to try it, is our standard response. “But I already have. We had this for lunch at preschool and I didn’t like it.” Well, I can be very sure that they did not have beetroot soup at preschool, nor oven-baked aubergine with mushrooms.

One day I caught her nibbling on a small piece of candy she had taken in a convenience store. We had a very serious talk (but a brief one due to circumstances) about stealing, and I think she understood the importance of it. But the whole situation was also a bit funny and I had to make an effort not to laugh: she clearly knew that what she was doing was wrong, so she had gone into a corner of the store and stood with her face towards the wall. She was so conspicuously up to no good that I could spot it from the other side of the store.

Actually, her poor lying and sneaking skills are a good reminder to me about how immature she really is in her understanding of the world around her, and of other people in particular.

The candy incident made me think that perhaps our current sweets regime is not working for her. Until now we’ve stayed away from the lördagsgodis concept, going for “everything in moderation” instead, but now we’re giving lördagsgodis a try. My hypothesis is that with our current regime she never feels like she’s been able to eat her fill. She’s always left unsatisfied, wanting more. Well, if she gets to eat lots in one go, perhaps she will feel satisfied afterwards. We’ve only tried it for a week and a half so too early to tell if it’s working better. For now the main effect is that the daily nagging of “Are you done eating? When will you be done? Will you be done after you finish what is on your plate now? Can I bring out the sweets while you’re eating?” has been replaced by daily reminders of “I can’t have any sweets today if I want lördagsgodis.”

She is pretty obsessed with sweet stuff. She described this past Sunday as “a happy, happy day!” (“en lyckodag”) – a slightly sweeter-than-normal cereal for breakfast, then saffron buns after her last kids’ judo session for this term, then gingerbread cookies and ice cream at a birthday party.

One thing that’s struck me is how little curiosity she shows. She rarely asks about how things work, how the world works, or about words she doesn’t understand in a book I read for her. Sometimes I pause and ask her, “do you know what andedräkt means?” and she says no. But she never thinks to ask me.

She is reading and writing better than ever, even though she hardly gets any practice. She is even reading a little bit more fluently in Estonian. She is also more confident with numbers – when adding 7 + 6, for example, she no longer counts first 7 fingers and then 6 more fingers & toes and then counts them all together. She says “7” and then counts “8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13” while holding up one finger at a time, which means that she can “count” six fingers without actually counting to six. What she still lacks is a feel for numbers greater than 10. She can in all seriousness suggest that 7 + 7 is 9. But when I pointed out that 5 + 5 makes 10, and 7 is greater than 5 so 7 + 7 should be more than 10, she agreed, and quickly said “10… and 1, 2 makes 12, and 1, 2 more makes 14”.

I am already thinking that next year she’ll be going to school. Schoolwork won’t be a challenge for her. What I’m concerned with is the risk of boredom – and when schoolwork catches up with her, I worry about her ability to apply herself, to actually work. But perhaps it is too early to worry about that now.

Favourite iPad games: everything from Toca Boca, especially Toca Tea Party, Toca Store, and Toca Birthday Party.

Favourite book: Printsessijuttude varalaegas, a pink book chock-full with princesses. We’ve read it almost daily since she got it for her birthday. I am getting really tired of princesses.

Other small stuff: earlier this week she let a friend cut her hair. (You can see some traces of it in the first photo above. Eric evened it out where possible, but there are still some gashes in her bangs.) It’s the kind of thing I’ve read about – kids cutting their own hair – but never thought that Ingrid would try it. We had been saying for a while that we really should cut her hair. I guess she got tired of waiting and took things in her own hands.