And now we are 12

One of the things about older child adoption is that you just never know what age your child is going to be. Now I don't mean that the paperwork is wrong and you're not sure if it is correct, though that certainly is a very real thing. No, I'm talking about what age your child is going to be on any given day, or at any given moment. It's a moving target.

As I wrote about earlier, H. has been going through some emotionally younger ages recently, which even though it's hard, is a very good thing. Every child needs to move through these developmental stages to reach full health and maturity, and for adopted children with a trauma history, their past did not allow for them to do this work at the optimal time and so they do it later. 

What I find to be the trickiest thing, though, is that while they are doing this younger work, they are also continuing to do the work of their chronological age. This is also healthy and appropriate. It is also the cause of a bit of parental whip lash as their parents try to keep up with whichever developmental age they happened to jump to at that moment.

Case in point. The day after the post about H.'s regressive behavior, she was happily and calmly spending her day making complex origami creations. (She really wanted me to share these with everyone.) The frames are made separately from the stands behind them which are separate from the pictures she drew to put in them. I think  friend showed her how to make them initially, but from that point, she was completely on her own. I have no idea how to make them. Considering where she started three years ago, this is no small feat.