Today's guest post is from Jessi, and is a topic near and dear to my heart. Siblings, who are different.
If you have more than one child, there is a universal truth that cannot have escaped you – no two are alike. While I have heard this truism batted about, I never really understood the depth of it until I began raising my girls. They could not be more different if they were of separate species, and in fact, sometimes I wonder…
Brynna, my oldest is seven and Spock. If Spock were a drama queen. Despite her constant histrionics, she is, at her core, a creature of logic. Since she was little, we have exploited this trait to its highest power. Case in point, her fears.
Brynna has fought a few normal childhood fears – monsters, the dark, storms. And no amount of checking the closet and assuring her that God was bowling was going to allay those fears. Logic, however, that eternal killer of magic, can also slaughter fear. When she feared storms, we bought books, we looked at websites, we watched Twister. In other words, we studied.
And we successfully allayed her fears. She knows where to go in any type of natural disaster. (Trust me, knowing proper protocol for volcanos may one day come in handy in Kentucky.) And thus, she sleeps easily and well, knowing that she is prepared and the likelihood of a tsunami ripping her out of her bed as she slumbers is fairly low.
So, when Maren, my three year old, who, by the way, is not Spock, because suddenly and terribly afraid of snakes, Brynna tried her darndest to allay those fears the only way she knows how.
“Maren, did you know that the smallest snake is the Thread Snake and is the size of a toothpick?”
“Maren, did you know that Kentucky only has 4 native species of poisonous snakes?”
“Maren, let me tell you about the giant snake in Harry Potter who can turn people to stone by looking at them…”
Unfortunately, this tactic doesn’t work on those not ruled by logic. Maren is primarily ruled by cheesecake. So, every night Brynna gets Maren all worked up about horrible snakes of doom and I wonder why I forgot to buy more cheesecake.
The good news is that perhaps the emotional scars will fade before Maren can remember all this.
