An Interesting Girl

I’ve been saying for a while that Mouse is just not that into toys. I don’t think she ever has been. As a baby, she wanted to be where I was; seeing, doing, participating in whatever I was doing. She’d play with a toy if I was sitting there with her, but otherwise, it was very rare for her to go and play with anything on her own. She’s still that way and she’s 5.

Whenever a birthday or gift giving holiday comes around I cringe when people ask me for gift ideas, because I know they’re expecting something straightforward like “She loves Lego/Barbie/xzy”. But honestly, I never know what to say. We struggle with ideas for ourselves.

For the last while she’s been very into princess things, much to my dismay and DESPITE trying to avoid them. However, she really only likes the dress-up clothes and accessories and real clothes/accessories with princesses on them. She’s not into the dolls, the toys etc. None of that attracts her at all.

She has toys. Balls, play kitchen, baby dolls, blocks, various little trinkets, electronic toys, Little People and a beautiful dollhouse that my mother made a few years ago. She rarely plays with any of this.

So what does she do? She follows me around the house asking me to figure out what to do. She colours. She’ll do crafts or play board games – but right now, those require a lot of my attention, which is fine, except well, it’s hard to give her 14 hours of interrupted time a day. She’ll play on the computer, she’ll play outside (swinging, mostly), she’ll run around and make nests out of flowers and will chase her sister around until they’re both crazy. Of course, she’ll happily watch tv. (Not exactly my first choice)

When she’s with her friends, she wants to play chase, pretend animals and dress-up, and many versions of rescue games- princess rescue, animal rescue etc. Again, all of which is fine. She’s not into animal dress up outfits or puppets or anything like that.

She loves to take any kind of class. She recently started tumbling classes and not only does she love it, she’s actually pretty good at it. She loves to swim and said after 2 hours the other day when Baboo and I were waterlogged and headed home “But we were ONLY there HALF an hour!” Clearly time passed faster for her than it did for me. She loves dancing and music and anything where she can interact with someone, ANYONE else.
I worry a bit because she really doesn’t spend a lot of time by herself. I want her to feel comfortable being alone and being able to entertain herself.

Today, after 5 hours of play time with 5 other friends, she complained to me that NOBODY, particularly ME ever played with her. Hmmm. This is mostly because after a house full of 6 kids and 3 adults I was ready for a break and asked her to play by herself. I had set up a pretend grocery store in the playroom (which is a whole other blog topic, suffice it to say for now, that it’s used a guest room more than it’s played in) and got both girls interested so I could go and clean up the typhoon mess from the playdate. It lasted all of 4 minutes. Sigh.

So, tonight, I did a little test. I had $10 in Kohl’s cash that was going to expire today. I told the girls they could each get anything they wanted that cost about $5. Baboo found some little figurines that she wanted right away. Mouse wandered up and down the aisles (all 4 of them) for 20 minutes. She initially looked at a $20 princess “music” (code for annoying) book, even though she knew it was too expensive. She did say she didn’t really WANT it. And then she asked about an Ariel princess Barbie type doll that could go in the water, but it was also beyond the budget and she also wasn’t that interested. Then she asked to look at the clothes.

We wandered around there for another 10 minutes before she decided on an oversized (read, for older girls) pink, sparkly t-shirt with horses on it that says “Free to be yourself”. She wanted to buy it to wear as a nightgown (and it will probably still be a nightgown on her in 7 years). However, it was $4.99 on sale and she said it was what she wanted.

As soon as she came home, she ran to put it on and danced around with joy. I shook my head.

For her birthday, she received some money from my brother. $20. A fortune to a 5 year old. When asked where she would like to go to spend her money, she said she wanted to go to the Disney (ie Princess) store. When I asked her if she’d like to look at Toys R Us, she said no. So, I took her to the mall. Again, we wandered around and she had hoped to find an Ariel or Jasmine dress up outfit that was within her $20, but there weren’t any. (We’re going for a full set, I guess). She had a very hard time deciding, but in the end, bought: a small plastic Ariel figurine, an Ariel beach bag, an Ariel plate, little snack bento-box thing and spoon/fork set. She paid for it herself and used her little wallet and got her own princess bag to put it all in. She came in under budget and was happy to have a bit of change to put in her piggy bank. She certainly got a haul of stuff for her $20!

On the way home, I asked if she was happy with her purchases, feeling a bit guilty that she didn’t find something FUN, but she was thrilled with them. So, who am I to argue?

I guess I have a hard time relating to her in some ways because as I kid I played for hours with my baby dolls, Barbie dolls to an extent, Legos, stuffed animals – you name it. I’d often play by myself, but also played pretend (house, school, dolls) with friends. I loved to read and did that by myself as well. At one point, I had a little “fort” made it my closet and stayed in there a lot. I loved toys and was always happy to receive them. I would have KILLED to have the dollhouse she has.

I keep trying to find the THING that captures her imagination, but so far I haven’t found the real winner. There have been a few “almosts” but nothing that’s really been a hit with her. I try to watch her at her friends houses to see if she seems taken with things I likely wouldn’t buy for fear of wasting my money on her disinterest. But again, so far, nothing seems to click for her. Not that I think she “HAS” to have something, I’m just curious to find out what really makes her tick and how to help her grow.

So if you wonder why I have NO ideas for you when you ask what to get her as a gift… know you know I’m not kidding! It makes me crazy to waste money, time, space on things that she just is not interested in.

It’ll be interesting to see how she turns out as an adult and if I’ll be able to keep up until then.