Nourishing Emma's personality

Only child

Emma is an only child. She has two first cousins on Susan’s side of the family in New York but has little to no day to day contact with them.
She has two first cousins on my side of the family living three hours away by car but she is eight and nine years older than them respectfully. She has another cousin living in Germany but is also nine years older than him. It is possible that Emma will have a lonely life. Now that her parents are parting ways, this situation will likely only get worse.

The good

It’s not all bad however. Emma has a small but rock solid group of friends. Playdates are almost daily. Playdates can be as long as six or seven hours during which there is never even a hint of disagreement, boredom or discontent. Emma is always included in birthday parties and other such events. She tends to get invited to a lot. As parents of an only child, I think this is a noteworthy success.

Creative

Friends aside, they go home to siblings and families that are perhaps in somewhat better shape than ours. The saving grace here to combat that dissonance is that Emma has an introvert but highly creative personality style. Her particular personality style comes with many advantages which will serve her situation very well indeed. She is very creative, she is never bored, she is never idle and with maintenance and guidance, she’s unlikely to ever be idle. Naturally the creativity is not always fruitful but the process is wonderful and uplifting to observe. The process employed was also noted by her 3rd class teacher at a parent teacher meeting a couple of years ago.

I can see the cogs in her brain continually active to the point where having to emerge from being deep in thought actually inconveniences her. She is continually fixated on the next anime eye draw technique, the next cardboard box robot, the next short story, the next bedroom furniture layout (she rearranges her room regularly), the next teddy bear and/or doll role-play setting (also done with cardboard box and random item configurations). Among many other things, she also fixates her mind on learning gymnastics/trampoline tricks and contortion maneuvers with complete unyielding dedication generally to complete success.

Empathy for her

This is something I can very much relate to, I know it and know it’s power. Everything I do for Emma and everything I do with Emma aims to nurture this. It is an excellent defense against loneliness. It is also an excellent defense against toxicity. It comes with a certain quiet passion that can enable her to excel in a career that involves creating, creating anything as long as it’s creating.

Helping her

The introversion comes with problems however, despite sincerest efforts to help her overcome it, she is unfortunately extremely shy in other environments the magnitude of which is concerning to the point where I believe intervention may be needed. It extends into social anxiety. Such intervention has not been possible to date due to the less than ideal, adverse, family dynamic she experiences daily. When these proceedings are resolved, and within the bounds of the resultant agreement, I plan to address this by engaging the services of a psychologist.

To nurture her active, creative, problem-solving personality type, I have spent countless hours over the years sitting on floors playing with dolls and teddies.
I have drawn countless pictures with Emma, we’ve even written short stories together. I aim to be an explorer and an enabler of her abilities and talents; never pushing, just facilitating.
I am conscious to never pressure her into activities and/or sports that do not interest her.
Two examples of this are:

• She did not wish to continue Camogie having done one season. She did not continue it.
• She did not wish to continue Athletics having done one season. She did not continue it.

Further compensating for the fact that she is an only child I have always:

• Promoted a healthy fully inclusive family dynamic where as parents we participate in fun activities to perhaps a greater extent than a family with more than one child may do.
• Promoted roleplay, collaboration by setting up scenarios such as, restaurant, hospital, insurance-policy, bingo, birthday party, hide and seek etc by actually acting out all of these concepts using teddies and dolls. “Dr. Frog” for example has always been her moral guide and a leader while “Golly” has always been a total messer.
• Promoted empathy and respect by talking about feelings.
• Promoted dialog and discussion to resolve disagreements logically, respectfully and peacefully.
• I find that children with older siblings seem to have a broader knowledge of the world of social media, popular culture and even sporting news. Recognizing this, I try to keep Emma up to speed by enabling her by introducing social-media, music, popular culture and technology in manageable increments.

Developmental

• Being conscious never to belittle, invalidate and dismiss Emma’s opinions and ideas.
• Promoted outdoor activities by nurturing her passion for gymnastics and trampolining. Even “spotting” her a while back in the trampoline as she mastered the back-hand-spring.
• Promoted further creativity by enabling Emma to imagine and create indoor and outdoor games unbounded by adult “help” or intervention.
• Promoted an awareness of basic DIY concepts. Again conscious that she is an only child and will have limited help and assistance as she gets older. Example, she can use a power screwdriver to remove door handles to oil them to eliminate squeaking, then reattach the door handles using the power screwdriver.
• Simple things like, using a microwave, cooking pasta, rules of the road, crossing the busy main road etc are all basic things but in her case as an only child are essential life skills, independence is essential.

The powers of darkness never sleep

None of this is made easy by the dynamic at home. Parenting seems infinitely more difficult than it should be. This is one of the reasons for the divorce.