In Which I See My Daughter Changing

Julianna has been changing lately. It started a year or so ago, when we realized she had lost that wispy, delicate feel. She’s still tiny and I can still pick her up and carry her, but it’s no longer easy. She feels solid now, rather than fragile, her physical frame finally catching up with her indomitable spirit.

But the change is more than physical. This school year, she can participate in table discussions about what she did at school today. For the first time, we can trust her to remember and be able to tell us what special they had and a little bit about what they did in it. We’re no longer hearing about fire drills every night, whether they had one or not. She’s beginning to develop a more complex interaction with the world, and it shows in what she’s able to process in her school work. She can get on the computer now and navigate independently…at least, enough to get to Sofia the First.

She’s still very far behind, of course. Even in reading, her classmates have finally overtaken her, because her ability to process and retell what she’s reading still lags far behind her ability to decode words—which, truthfully, has always been a little astonishing. And her teachers (bless them!) set a goal of her doing her homework independently, which means when she gets on her math app she is working on the kindergarten level. She’s a little over halfway through it. And she’s in the third grade.

All the cognitive changes were gratifying…or perhaps I should say satisfying…until I realized her deviousness has taken a flying leap to match. Remember how, a year ago, when we were talking about going to confession, we couldn’t come up with anything she needed to confess? Because she didn’t really sin?

We don’t have that problem anymore.

She’s selectively deaf. She is not above telling a blatant falsehood in order to get what she wants, and she is very good at recognizing how to play a busy mom. To wit: last week we were sitting at piano lessons. Tuesdays are not “movie days” in our house, but she does her homework on the iPad. I was very specific: “ST Math and MyOn only. Do you understand?” Yes, she understood. She sat on the other couch working, while I worked on my computer and listened to the boys’ lessons. My mother’s instinct started blinking when she got quiet, got up and headed for the stairwell…and closed the door. It took a minute or two for my conscious brain to catch up. I realized she had gone out into the stairwell to watch Netflix. She figured I was too preoccupied to notice.

Devious, I tell you. We have had to have conversations about dishonesty and disobedience lately.

Her hold on her fan club is less secure, too. We still have those moments—like the day we went for parent-teacher conference, and Julianna was crying, “Oh, hi, girl!” to a little kindergartener—maybe first grader—who was waiting in the hallway. “Wha-wha-wha—whass your name? My name—is—Julianna!” (It comes out Dzuuy—ANNA, which causes almost everyone to repeat, “Anna?”). This girl got a strange little smile on her face. “I know who you are,” she said.

Yup, that’s my girl.

But kids are starting to be more cognizant of her differences and, if not judgmental, at least less tolerant of them. I noticed it first among the kids at church and even the extended family—a look on the face, a stiffness in accepting hugs, and so on. And just as I began shaking my head at the fact that the Catholic kids were being less Christlike than the public school kids, I got a contact from school asking us to come and talk to the class about Down syndrome, because a handful of kids are starting to say…well, I don’t know exactly what, because it was left intentionally vague. And that’s okay. Better not to know.

So, as I’ve said before, things, they are a-changing. All change brings with it good and bad. We process, we adjust, we reset, and we go on.

Such is the life of Julianna, a little under two months shy of hitting her double digits.