Ingrid is five years old. Such a big girl.

She is so mature in some ways that it is easy to forget she is really just a small child. She is very verbal and forward and in some ways very smart, reads and writes. But then she does something that reminds me how young she is.

She is mature in her planning. She can think many days ahead, and plan for those days. She saves her finest plate and cup (with princess pictures) for special days, such as a Sunday, or when her best friend will come to visit. She saves the best part of a meal till last, “as dessert”. With sushi, for example, she first eats all the rice, then the salmon, then finally the prawn.

She is immature and naive in her worldview. She believes in fairies and in falling stars, believes that your wish will come true if you see a falling star and whisper your wish. (Disney’s The Princess and the Frog put that idea in her head, while Shrek and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella “taught” her about fairies.) She wishes for a pair of wings, “two real wings that you can put on and take off, that fly for real, and they should be white and silver and pink and turquoise”.

She is immensely immature in her relationships with other people, both kids and adults. She bosses around her friends and is then puzzled and upset when they object to following her directions. She is pretty bad at reading others’ emotional state and at putting herself in their position. Very self-centred and very anxious to be in control. She absolutely has to keep an eye on which colours of candy friend M chooses, and make sure that she herself gets the same or better. She insists on opening the refrigerator when friend E wants to get a yogurt, not because she wants to help but because she wants to keep an eye on E and see what she does at that fridge. Millimeterrättvisa, “millimetre fairness”.

But at the same time she can draw pretty reasonable conclusions about what facts other people should know. She is much better at figuring out what others know than what they feel. The other day Eric said something about a friend of hers (that her friend T had been in a bad mood during Ingrid’s birthday party because she’d gone to bed very late the day before). Ingrid immediately wondered how Eric could know that. (The answer: He’d spoken to T’s father on the phone.)

She has difficulty judging the passage of time. At a meal she can ask us, “is this lunch or dinner?”, not noticing that it is dusk outside – or not realizing that only a small part of the day has passed.

The games she plays with her friends center on simple relationships. It’s often mother and big sister, mother or baby, or two neighbours, or perhaps cat owner and cat, or maybe doctor and patient. She often turns real life into a game. When we’re about to eat she may tell me “you’re my neighbour and now I’m calling you on the phone and then I will ask if I can come and have dinner at your place”.

She continues to impress me with her reading ability. She reads fast and with ease, except for the lowercase letters b, d and h. They look too similar. She can read fast enough to actually read the lyrics of a semi-familiar song while she is singing it.

Tights and dresses have become her favourite clothes; she rarely wears anything else.