Little Miss (We Hope Will Be) Independent

Raina's reaction to new experiences is to hesitate, clutch a parent, and sometimes cry and refuse to engage. Numerous times we signed Raina up for some activity and then spent the whole time convincing her to try it. (With t-ball we utterly failed.) Over time we have pieced a process together that enables some amount of success: 1) anticipate all the possible things that would happen, 2) give Raina lots of advance notice of these possibilities, 3) offer an "if - then" bribe, and 4) talk up her bravery.

The buzzword of Raina's first grade classroom is "independently" and I've heard Raina refer to it a few times now.  Maybe this year she'll be more willing to try these things independently.