Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

From the time my daughter was little she’s always been so different from myself. A friend of mine whose daughter is a few months older always used to joke we got the wrong kids! Her daughter was always so rough and tumble and Mackenzie was always super careful didn’t really enjoy sports and was a real girlie girl unlike my Tom Boyish ways growing up. Over the years I’ve always heard how much my own mother and I were alike so I just assumed that Kenz would eventually gain some similar traits.  Can you believe that it’s taken me 13 years to finally realize that that’s not going to happen.

I think many parents have so many expectations for their kids, but so often their expectations are too high and just not realistic.  I was the social butterfly, always around a group of friends, talking on the phone, having sleepovers etc. Mackenzie is just as content to be with a bound sketchbook and pen or a good novel  off in the corner by herself.  Is she lonely? Perhaps.  Do I worry about her? On a daily basis.  The thing is I need to accept her for who she is for her to grow as an individual. I can encourage her strengths like art and protect her from the things that cause anxiety.  These things are the very things I thrived off of when I was her age, organized group activities.  We’ve tried to encourage her to join Cadets and that was a bust, sports are not her thing, so our next step is finding something that she loves and that is art.

From the time she was very young I knew she had a talent. This is one of her drawings that she drew for me at age three.  Most kids at three years of age are still content to scribble on blank pages, but not Mackenzie she wanted to create art. Over the years she has continued and amazes us daily with her creations.  She’s always very modest and self critical, I think this may be the sign of a true artist?

She’s now branching out to different forms of drawing she has a computerized drawing Tablet and uses photo shop to colourize black and white sketches.  It truly amazes me on a daily basis.  Here’s a few recent things that I grabbed to scan when she wasn’t looking. She hates praise and I’m not sure if she realizes just how talented she is.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 7:48 pm and is filed under 1, Being a Mom, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.