You Will Respect My Authora-TIE

We started going to My Gym last June so LMJ could start learning how to socialize with other kids. Spending the large majority of her time with only Grammy and me wouldn’t serve her well when she finally went to school. She started out not acknowledging that other kids existed. They were poltergeists that flitted around the ether annoyingly but didn’t affect her playing. Sometime in the fall she moved on to considering the other kids like they were chimps, and that they would be much better suited in cages. She was also reluctant to do anything new with the coaches. There was a period of stagnation and I didn’t enjoy going as much. Part of it had to do with kids not progressing in straight predictable lines. Part of it had to do with some of the coaches we were familiar and comfortable with moving on to bigger and better things and being replaced with some off-brand scrubs. And part of it had to do with the Thursday day night class being a little rowdier than we needed - *cough, cough* bad parents *cough, cough*. Switching to the Monday class solved the last two problems. LMJ solved the last problem by coming out of her shell a little bit. She now says hello to other kids, and last week she not only bounced on the trampoline with another little one, she joined another little one who was already bouncing. Unfortunately (perhaps), she may have come out of her shell a little too much. To be blunt, she’s bossy. The other day there were kids who were significantly older than she is playing at the park, and she spent more than a little bit of time and effort yelling at them that there’s no yelling in the park. They paid her no mind, most likely because they couldn’t understand her. She was yelling in German. She went from shrinking violet to Der Führer in about a week.