“I Am Invincible.”

I believe I can fly…

This picture just about sums up the Miss, once she’s gotten to know you or the playground in question. Obviously she did that with me close to upchucking my heart enough times that I eventually chilled enough to take that pic. (But still. She’d go higher if there was anywhere higher to go. More good news for me.)

This is an interesting one because:

1) The Miss soon inspired some older girls to strike poses atop this thing. A different older girl had previously read from a nearby sign several times that the playground was for 5-12s and “the bunch of you are obviously only 3 or 4 years old so you can’t play here.” Said repeatedly in English, Cantonese and Putonghua loudly with several of us mums around supervising our toddlers. (We exchanged raised eyebrows but otherwise said nothing. Sign Reading Girl’s own parents, possibly oblivious, eventually showed up to collect her and a slightly smaller sibling.)

2) A mum of a borderline autistic and ADHD child told me (yes partially in relation to the Miss) that said conditions are especially hard to diagnose in girls under 5 – and that lack of response to low grade pain, lack of fear of heights, water, etc etc are among the “symptoms”. Separately, we also know several toddlers who had been flagged for ADHD (turned out to be nothing, and I won’t tell you where they were flagged but for the record it is NOT where either Rockstar goes to school), their parents obviously getting really upset when flagged. (Touch wood the Miss has not been flagged. But it’s true we’ve seen other kids flagged whom we thought were markedly “better behaved” than she was and I wondered exactly how some kids get flagged)

No, I’m not freaking out beyond preferring she has a helmet on when she decides she is invincible. (Oxymoron alert.) This is just here because it’s an ongoing part of our parenting journey…