I don’t know what to do.

After a week of Helena madly working on paper dolls… well they started off paper dolls with photocopied cut out clothes (she’s not interested in designing her own) but blue tacking the clothes on was unsatisfactory so then it was tiny tabs, then tiny magnets followed by gluing the actual book page on magnet sheets and magnetic people. Sounds like an excellent technology project of design revisions. Lots of cutting. The project has been shelved for the moment as it is still unsatisfactory. There were massive tears and rants of frustration due to H deciding SHE was a failure. Talk about an emotional roller coaster- she showed me a graph of this with her hands after one of the ideas didn’t work and while the next idea was so going to work. I have said doesn’t work “yet” and how can trying new ideas be considered failure… who knows if she believes me. It was very hard to get her to do other things.

and now today it is this new project …

There is not just one wee book

But the beginnings of a library and it’s accompanied by

whole new Sylvanian set ups – this is a preschool. What does it mean? Why? What is the “value” of doing this? I can’t see it, I want to do something worthwhile…. I am sitting on my hands and biting my tongue in the corner. My child is a force, it would result in a day of hell if I stopped her.. I am holding on to the idea that this weekend I am going to a quilting guild retreat where I will sew all day and into the night only stopping for food on a project that has no reason for being except that I really really want to do it! And do not interrupt me….

Later: she read over my shoulders and took offense as to the uselessness of her task. This is her list of what she is learning

• Teaching as it’s a play school
• Fine motor skills
• Art
• Thinking about other people’s lives, eg what is their favorite thing
• Creativity
• Perseverance
• Money saving – by making her own not buying
• Collection making, to add to my collection of Sylvanian stuff