A Leader

When Monika was adopted and people found out that she was from Hunan, they would say they are spicy girls.  Initial I thought it meant she will love spicy food.  That is far from the truth.  She is a spicy girl in terms of her personality.  This daughter of my is a deep thinker, she can sense things that others didn't catch and her brain is sometimes 4 or 5 steps ahead of everyone.  Because of this, she does come off being bossy.  With her being the oldest of the 3 younger sisters, she got a lot of practice when they first came home.  They would do whatever it was she was telling them to do.  She also has two younger cousins that are close in age of her and her two younger sisters.  She was able to boss them around too.

For about the last year, that has been changing and Monika has really struggle with this.

She get mad fairly quick when they won't do what she is demanding asking them to do.

And many times becomes a drama queen over it and thinks everyone is out to get her and get her in trouble.

She has kept me on my toes in trying to figure out different ways to handle this.

We have had a lot of talks about she will be a great leader, she just needs to learn how to channel it better.

Along with working on this, we have been working on the very annoying whining she also does.  She doesn't usually get her way with the whining, but it doesn't stop her from doing it and even loses things because of it.

The last couple of weeks, she has made some improvement on her own.

She is not always reacting right away when someone won't do what she is telling asking them to do.

She has toned her whining down with me

She is trying to listen to the whole story before reacting.

We aren't successful every time, but we are having success

Most of the time she has great ideas, in the above pictures, it isn't one that I want her to teach others.  Even though it is cute, and she makes it look good....nope...don't want her teaching that one.

Wednesday night after Gymnastics, Monika came up to me and told me that Coach Steph and Kal wanted to talk to us.  My first thought was great, now that her sister is in the same class with her, she has become a bosser to her.  Also the summer schedule has more times for kids to practice to they split up the kids and instead of 25 kids (except on Mondays when they are all there) there is 9 girls in Monika's group. I am thinking she is trying to control and boss the kids.

The coaches start out with do you know what is a good leader?  Monika answers what she thought it meant and the coaches said that is correct, they continued to ask some more questions and Monika continues to answer them as best as she could.  At the same time, I still not sure what this talk is about and questioning is she being "talked to" or "praised"?

 

As you saw in the previous picture, she was color coded all the way.  Even her nails were blue.  I had just brought her new underwear and she likes the boy short style.  She thought it makes a great wrap to tuck hair in when hot and thought she could go to school with this.

Good thing I was home to prevent that.

I don't want her to be the leader in starting that fashion style.

So anyways, back to gymnastics....Once they were done talking about what a good leader is, they informed Monika that the last couple of weeks they have seen a huge improvement with her attitude and has seen some strong positive leadership roles in her and asked her if she wanted to be a leader in gymnastics.  She instantly said yes.  They explained the importance of being a good leader.

When we were driving home, I was telling Monika how proud I was of her and reinforced to her about being a good leader and not bossy.

Hopefully with this positive turn around these last couple of weeks, we will continue to move forward.  It is hard to believe in a month she will enter the double digit.

Good Job Monika