Once upon a time there was a cute little girl that drove her mom crazy.
THE END.
I guess there could be a few more paragraphs to the story. I would go something like this:
Once upon a time there was a family that wanted just one more little princess in their family; but she would have to be a real princess. The mom and the dad followed all the online tips to having a girl and much to their splendider the ultrasound tech
indeed announced that a princess would soon join their family. Years past and the family tried very hard to not spoil this princess as to not create a brat. She was sweet and loved her dear parents.
Over the years the sweet princess developed some minor sensory quirks...her socks bugged her precious little toes and her shoes had to fit just right.
One fall day a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and
lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly hardly anything felt good on the princess and she was besides herself. The parents opened their bedroom door one morning and wondered what that could be hollering outside their door.
It was a princess standing out there in front of the door. But,
good gracious! what a sight the new school pants, new shirt and the tennis shoes had made her look. The anger in her face and her wild hair made her parents want to climb back in their bed. And yet she said that she was
a real princess.
Well, we'll soon find that out,
thought the old parents. But they said nothing and went into the bedroom,
took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom;
then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then
twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.
On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning the parents asked how she had slept.
"Oh, very badly!" said she. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all
night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on
something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It's
horrible!"
Now they knew that she was a real princess
because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and
the twenty eider-down beds.
Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.
So the parents kept her as a daughter and knew that they had
a real princess.
There, that is a true story.
After meeting with a friend that is an occupational therapist and reading and reading about sensory disorders I think Chloe has a mild case of Tactile Defensiveness. "Tactile defensiveness is the tendency to react negatively and emotionally to touch sensations. The child is overly sensitive to stimuli that other people would hardly notice. In a child with tactile defensiveness, the protective response is the
default; even in a non-dangerous situation (in other words, a particular
sensation ought to be perceived as discriminative), the child perceives
what he is experiencing as threatening, and reacts accordingly. The
child with tactile defensiveness is always “on guard,” and is unable to
perceive regular tactile sensations in an unexaggerated,
un-“adrenalined” way."
After taking a short sensory profile about Chloe I am comforted that her issues are minor though they sure feel prominent to me. I've also been reading
"Raising Your Spirited Child: a guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka which I feel has been giving me some great ideas in understanding not only Chloe but others as well.
So as we work on educating ourselves and doing some exercises to relax the protective system we are trying hard to change our expectations and compromise. I'm biting my lip each morning as Chloe wears the same black leggings and rotates between about 2-3 shirts. I close my eyes as she wears her silver sandals EVERY day to school even in the 32 degrees. We compromised with a hair cut if she would not longer let me fix her long locks.
Meanwhile I shop. I buy shoes and more shoes; socks, coats, dresses, etc...just in case I strike the gold mind and find something that might be comfy for my Princess and the Pea. And I return 99.8% of what I buy.
And we are learning to live with each other. And some days I'm not very good at being compassionate...like today. So I remind myself how much I wanted my princess and vow to love Chloe as little more.
The hair cut debut:
