Today is Big S’s 6th birthday. This year she has been very excited by the prospect and does not seem to have been suffering from any anxiety that this milestone might mean her having to move on to a new family. I helped her to school this morning, pushing her new “grown up girl’s scooter” up the hill and dropping her off at the playground. I decided to stick around and watch.
There was a group of girls from her class talking just inside the gate. She ran straight past them to the far end of the payground and swung herself around the netball post. She spotted N, someone she has told me is her best friend. She ran over and spoke to N. N kept walking and delivered a withering brush off of a sort I had not thought within the capabilities of a 6 year old. Big S went back to the netball post. The other girls in the class began a game in which they walked backwards around the playground. Big S moved over and got in their way and then started to talk to one of them. She was pushed away. Big S retreated to the netball post and only left it to speak to a teacher.
I felt sick and it was all I could do not to run onto the playground, scoop her up and hug her till her eyes popped out. What on earth, I wondered, could the problem be?
P had coffee with another mum and broached the topic. The class has decided, apparently, that Big S is too bossy. The class is almost certainly right. Big S is overwhelmingly bossy. She feels compelled to set the agenda. Whatever anyone is playing, she has a better thing that everyone must immediately do. Perhaps that is just how she is, but it is a very common trait in adopted children. When your world has spun dizzyingly in your early years; when you have been pitched at no notice from one family to another, you crave some control over your world. It is a perfectly understandable need which is heightened by the low self-esteem that also frequently characterises adopted children: you try too loudly and too often to make a case for friendship because you don’t really believe that you deserve love.
My heart broke this morning. I desperately want to break the link between Big S’s past neglect and her present feelings. I want her to know she is an amazing little girl and, most of all, I want her to be happy. It looks as if that will not come easy. Would that it did. Would that it did.