The other day, Alyssa's teacher asked how she was doing, how she was liking school. I must have looked at her quizzically because she followed up by saying that she's doing great. She's just quiet, so she was checking in.
"QUIET?!?" was my shocked response. Alyssa? Quiet?
I told Ms. Plencner that from all the stories Alyssa tells me, she certainly seems to be having lots of fun. She loves school.
The quiet comment stumped me though. So of course I over-analyzed all the way home from school.
At home, Alyssa rarely stops chattering. Or singing. Or making some kind of noise. She puts on how-to shows complete with commercials. She tells me about her dreams and her nightmares. She asks billions of questions. She talks to her dolls and her dolls talk back. She tells long long long stories. It's constant.
Quiet?
Is everything okay? I see her teacher every day and we chat often. Was there a reason she mentioned this now? Did something happen? It's not that I can't imagine Alyssa being quiet. Amanda is the same way. Much quieter at school than at home. In fact, I remember having the same conversation with the same teacher about Amanda when she was in Kindergarten. And it took me by surprise then too.
I think it's just that I spend so much time with them and I feel like I know them so well that it's jarring to hear a report that doesn't fit in with the picture I've drawn in my head.
I understand that people act differently in different situations. I totally get that. I was more surprised by the quiet comment because every day Alyssa gives me long detailed reports about her school days and in her stories, she's not quiet. She raises her hand often and speaks up a lot... But not just a lot. In some of her stories she raises her hand more often than anyone else. More than once I've heard the line, "I was the only one who raised my hand." And I'm always happy to hear these reports. Relieved, actually. Because speaking up in class was something I struggled with.
It occurred to me then that I just have issues with the whole quiet thing. I decided it would have bothered me less if the teacher had said Alyssa had been disturbing the class by chatting too much. Now that's pretty screwed up. You'd think I'd know that quiet can be a good thing considering how often I wish I had more of it. But instead my quiet self freaks out and starts SCREAMING inside when one of my children gets labeled "quiet."
See,
quiet was a label that followed me through all of my school years and even into my work years. It was the thing, that
thing, that would show up on report cards and even on performance reviews. And perfectionist that I was,
that was what I focused on. It didn't matter how much the rest of the report glowed with gold stars, hard work, successes or A+'s... It made me crazy that I never could conquer that
quiet thing. Even when I tortured myself on a regular basis by forcing myself to speak up, the label stuck. And speaking up in large groups or even relatively small ones has never really gotten easier for me.
I've made peace with it now for the most part thanks in part to a wise friend who explained that trying to turn myself from an introvert to an extrovert was like trying to turn my brown eyes blue. Studies have shown that introverts are actually wired differently than extroverts. So quiet is just part of who I am. And that's not a bad thing.
Of course one casual comment from her teacher doesn't mean anything. But I did make a mental note to listen extra carefully to Alyssa after school that day. And when she pronounced it "the worst day ever" (totally different than her normally happy reports) I figured I was in for a good story.
Instead, she told me that the day had started like it always does with a few songs, like the Good Morning song... and then there was math. She slowly walked me through all of the math problems. Told me who raised their hand and if they'd gotten the answers right or wrong. We stopped to pick up a roly-poly (See photo above.) Then the teacher asked them if they knew any words in Spanish. Alyssa said she was the first to raise her hand and volunteer, "Hola!" (Completely due to our intense home-schooling efforts or whatever you call the hours she's spent watching Dora the Explorer) and then she told me what every other kid had said. (No actual Spanish was spoken after this point, but she put on a heavy Spanish accent and created a whole lot of interesting words and meanings to go along with them.) No amount of prompting got her to tell the story any faster.
We had a brief musical interlude when she explained and demonstrated, complete with snapping motions, how they'd learned a new song about the days of the week, sung to the tune of "the Adamms Family." (snap, snap.) She told me there was a girl in the other Kindergarten class wearing the exact same jeans as her. She told me she and a bunch of others got awards for getting happy faces every single day of school. She told me that Emma and Gabby are the tallest girls in the class and that Anthony is the oldest. She told me that Nicolas washes his eyeballs and that Luke's tooth fell out.
Twenty-eight minutes into the story, Alyssa finally explained why it was the worst day ever. It seems that "other Alyssa" was driving her around on a bike and they crashed into the fence. No, she didn't get hurt and neither did "other Alyssa". I asked if that was really enough to qualify it as the Worst.Day.Ever. And she said, "Well it was cold outside too."
Seems to me that if that was her worst day ever that her life must be pretty good, quiet or not.
And her story wasn't over. She went on to tell me that she'd exchanged phone numbers with Madeline (strangely, Madeline's phone number has only 5 digits.) She told me Brianna had a tummy ache and that Jake spilled his milk on her backpack. She told me about the upcoming field trip to the pumpkin patch and that Eric can speak Chinese. She counted to 100, more or less. She told me why she wrote her name in orange and that if she tilts her head a certain way and squints her eyes that things look funny. By this point my eyes had glazed over and I may have been drooling slightly. And that's when I officially decided I'm not worried about Alyssa being quiet at school. But I am a little jealous.
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Dear Mom,
