When Sophia was about three it was fast becoming obvious that she wasn't the type to take everything you said as gospel. She and I had an interesting debate about knives around that very age. I had stated that all knives were sharp and that she shouldn't touch them because of that. At which point she picked up the butter knife that I had just made her sandwich with and demonstrated that this one, in particular, wasn't sharp at all. She pointed out the error in my statement...so I had to explain it further. As a result, she has been very wary of the types of knifes that cut and will even remind me to careful of them. For Sophia, this became a rule.
At one stage I did tell her that rules were there to keep us safe. To her - that's logical. Now...if its a rule....there's a good reason for it to be so. And if we want her to understand and accept the importance of something - we will tell her it's a rule and woe betide the poor soul to break it.
One example of how strongly she will adhere to a rule is her attitude to matches. She was playing with a little girl out on a camping trip when they came across a box of matches not so long ago. The other child jumped on them saying, 'ohhh! a box of matches' just like they normally do. Sophia fled, yelling 'NO NO NO' at the top of her lungs, bringing it to the attention of the adults pretty quickly.
It hasn't entirely been a boon - we did come a cropper with this a wee while back - not in an unmanageable way though. It definitely helped that we understood the way Sophia thinks about rules, ahead of time. She started ballet this year because she'd been watching it on TV and was keen to join in so she went to the littlelies class where they just learn to enjoy dance and stretch and get the hang of co-ordination and movement. In this class the teacher had said that the children were not to touch certain things (balls & props) until it was their turn to touch them - "that is the rule". Well Sophia took it on herself to be the one to point out to every child that broke that rule, how naughty they were. We handled this by teaching her about roles. For example, it was the teacher's job to worry about whether or not the other children were behaving and it was Sophia's job to have fun and play. So as time went on, she didn't get so upset by the rules being broken. We are very lucky that she can understand the finer details there.
Another area where Sophia's 'mode of logic' seems to come into things is with her social responses. Even now she seems to acknowledge that that's whats expected of her but it doesn't seem to make much sense to her. My husband thinks that this could be an indication of possible Aspergers and he could be right but Sophia is bright enough to work her way around it so we are not concerned. When somebody says, 'Good morning' we've often got to tell Sophia how to respond. For a child with an impressive memory, it's surprising. But if you tell her the correct response, she will humor you. Although whether or not this has everything to with her personal foibles is also questionable. She often doesn't seem aware that the person is addressing her - as if she's not mindful that greeting people is what everybody does when they see you. With this one, we're not going to know for sure where she's coming from until she's a bit older I think. We'll keep you posted.
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