Last year when Tessa was in Kindergarten, there was brief period of time where she was super shy. Her teacher told me that she had a hard time gauging how she was doing academically because she never talked.
She told me a few times that she didn't want to go to school or that she hadn't made many friends or that the other kids were smarter than her. She eventually grew out of it and grew to love her teacher and friends. Now in first grade, I'm pretty sure her shyness is mostly gone.
Except when someone tries to talk to her at church and she tries her best to crawl IN my pant leg.
But in those early days I was sometimes at a loss as to what to say to her in the morning when I was sending her into the building. Tell her to suck it up or lick her wounds for her and tell her she's the coolest kid I know?
Because I had been reading The Help the summer before, one day I found myself blurting our Aibeleen's sage advice to Mae Mobley:
No seriously, I did. It just came out. And I felt kinda dumb. But in all seriousness, it has stuck. Minus a bit of bad grammar.
It's been well over a year since then and we still do it every morning as I pull into the carpool drop off line. I made a couple of additions and now Charley does it too on his way to Pre-K.
They repeat after me, sometimes eagerly and sometimes with an eye roll..
Tessa is kind
Tessa is special
Tessa's important
Tessa is God's beautiful creation
Tessa is SMART!
..and going to learn a lot today
Who knows if they absorb it or even care, but I'm just going to keep on doing it because well...they are great words! If that't the last thing they hear me say (aside from good-bye) every single school day, then I am okay with that.
Even if it is just a borrowed movie quote.
