The Po Show

Club Tessa

One of the funny things about being a parent is constantly being surprised by how different your child is from yourself. This has come up so many times for me with Tessa (Matthew being my mini-me in so many ways).

She somehow got it into her head that she was going to have a club for the kids in her class, called Club Tessa. It was going to be on Thursdays, and they were going to have a slew of activities. She made signs for the various rooms in our house: TV room (the livingroom), Boy's Toy Room (Matthew's room), Girl's Toy Room (her room), Sleep Room (my and Ross' bedroom; she originally was going to call it the Rest Room, but I explained what that means), Nature Table (the diningroom), and Outside (back steps). Oh, and there was one for the bathroom. These all had charming little drawings on them.

Now, Tessa does a lot of pretend play, so I figured that this was another one of her little games with herself. But on Wednesday night, it became clear that she fully expected all these kids to show up after school the next day, because she had planned it that way. I tried to explain that we hadn't made any plans, hadn't contacted any of their parents, so it really couldn't work out. She was absolutely AGHAST that I could even suggest that, because she had planned everything! Those kids HAD to come!

She went to school on Thursday, determined to tell the kids to ask their parents if they could come over. I told her that that's not the way playdates work, that the parents have to ask, and it was really too late for me to call all the parents and ask them to bring their kids over that very day (not that I wanted to anyway!), so it really probably wasn't going to work out. She was still determined, however.

After school, she said she was going to play outside, so that when the kids came over, they would see her and know that this was her house. She made a flag out of a leaf and a stick, that said Club Tessa on it. It was really hot yesterday, so she kept coming back in to cool off, but then kept going outside again. Finally she said that she would wait inside, because they could see her flag and know this was the right house.

I just didn't know what to do. She kept saying, "I wonder what's taking them so long!" I kept gently trying to suggest that their parents probably couldn't let them come, since there had been so little notice and they might have had other plans. She was adamant, that it was Thursday, and that was the day for her club, so of course they had to come.

Finally it was dinner time and she sort of accepted that no one was coming. To my surprise, she didn't lose it and get really upset. She just said, "I'll have to ask them where they all were, tomorrow at school." I tried to tell her that I would happily set up a playdate with anyone she'd like, but I didn't think it would work out to have a whole bunch of kids over, but she said that was unacceptable. Everyone had to come, because it was her club, and her club couldn't just have one member.

This is what is so foreign to me, this incredible, steely resolve this child has. The organizational stuff is funny to me, but what really gets me is her determination to MAKE something happen, once she has decided she wants it to happen. In a way it frightens me, because I'm afraid that when she learns that the world doesn't always work this way, it's going to be a hard lesson, but on the other hand, I think, this is a girl who can move mountains.

Watch out, world, it's Club Tessa.