My daughter is 5 and I see so many of my personality traits (read: quirks) in her. I wonder if she was born with these “ticks” by virtue of getting half of my DNA or if she is a product of her environment and simply learned by watching me. It is so interesting to see the essence of what makes you YOU in another person.
For example, I’m a dawdler. It takes me forever to get ready to go somewhere (if I’m actually getting made up) and it’s not because I have some elaborate routine. My problem is that I don’t focus on the task at hand and instead multi-task which leads me down rabbit holes. My daughter is also a slow poke. She has no sense of urgency when it comes to getting ready in the morning or trying to get out the door for something. She sees other things that catch her eye or need her attention and she loses focus. I’m constantly telling her to focus!
Her preschool teachers said that her pokiness manifests itself in other ways such as over-focusing…like when her job for the week is the lunch table cleaner. The girl will clean those lunch tables forever and the other children will have moved on to circle time and she’s still wiping the table, table legs, chair fronts and backs, floor, etc. I also have a little bit of obsessiveness/perfectionism-gone-awry when assigned a job or task so it’s weird that she has this trait, too. We are going to be in for it this fall when she goes to the big dance known as kindergarten.
I’m a big proponent of “slow and steady wins the race” and my daughter has obviously adopted this outlook, too.
Smarties, do you see yourself in your child’s personality?
