It's hard being little. I remember keenly
wanting to fit in with all the older people around me. I was the
youngest of six kids--and quite a bit younger, at that. The closest in
age was four years older, and they went up from there to about 11 years
older. No matter how old I was, I was still the baby. (Still am!)
Some people would say I had an old soul.
I do remember feeling like I was stuck in a little body. To make
matters more complicated, I was interested in adult things and was
academically precocious. So I in my fevered little mind, I was on-par with the "taller" people around me; they just couldn't see it.
Why do I share this? I've been pondering about my six-year-old, Meri.
She wants what I wanted: Validation. To
fit in with a houseful of older and much more accomplished people.
Shared experiences. Energy, momentum, progress. But in some important
ways, she's not ready or able to do what she sets out to do, and won't
get what she's after.
I confess that privately I've been
thrilled and relieved to find her so ambitious to learn to read and
write since she was four. But as I watched her fumble with that yarn, I
had to ask myself what was driving her to do something she wasn't
ready for--and if it wasn't a metaphor for many of her other ambitions
in general.
She has a need. She's searching for a
way to fill it. And I've almost given in to becoming a willing
accomplice in allowing her to seek fulfillment of that deep emotional
need through doing--instead of being.
~From "Core Phase Crochet," by Rachel DeMille
Struggles of an Old Soul 
