"I love you, Stinky Face"

It's the holidays now. For this Christmas, due to bad weather and my 1st trimester condition, we decided to just stay put and not take a family year-end holiday.

We took Ariel to our favorite hangout mall - Eugene Valley Center - last Saturday. Honestly we have not been there for a while. While Ariel was at the indoor playground, we found that she actually took a longer time to warm up to the surrounding as compared to before when she was much younger. When the big kids wanted to play the same thing, she was playing, the first thing she did was to abandon whatever she was playing with, and run to our side.

Frankly, these reactions of hers were pretty alarming to us, as parents. My first thought was, "Maybe it's our fault, we've not been taking her to the playground for a while now... or maybe she's still not getting enough interaction with other kids... or oh dear, both of us are rather sociable people, how come Ariel is not?" Lots of questions come to our head, and it's very tempting for us to really want to change that.

However, as I step back and think for a minute. Although we need to put it some effort to help Ariel cultivate more prosocial behavior and spirit, I'd think first and foremost, I just got to accept Ariel for who she is, even if she's got an entirely different temperament from either of us. Only when we are able to accept her for who she is, will she be able to stand up for her own rights one day.

I believe that one needs to be able to love ourself first, before we can have the courage to stand up for ourselves and what we believe. For many children, while they are still learning about themselves and the world around them, and how the world perceive them, it is even more important that their parents can love and accept them for who they are whether they change or not.

There is this children's book that I love reading to Ariel, that talks about a parent's love for the child, regardless of what the child is - whether it's a big scary ape, or a stinky skunk, or a meat-eating dinosaur, or an Alien. It's called, "I love you, Stinky Face" At the end of each, the parent would always say, "I love you.... (whoever you are)".