Love at First Grade

My daughter came home from school today and told me that she has a boyfriend.  She has been talking about this boy for a few weeks now, but it was just today that things started to get serious.  She's hoping to marry him someday, but she said it's too early to know that for sure.  I was happy to hear that, as she's six years old.

She has started to care about what she wears and talks about how she looks. Until very recently, Sophie asked me to pick out her clothes.  And if she picked them out herself she looked like some kind of deranged clown.  Competing patterns, glaring colors, a thick heavy sweater on a 95° day.  But even in her crazy get-ups, she is stunningly beautiful.  So put her in a cute pair of jeans and a fitted little tee and she's a six-year-old knockout. Who wouldn't have a crush on her!

Years ago, when Sophie was about nine months, we were in an ECFE class.  All of the moms sat in a circle and in the center was a roly poly mess of babies.  My only memory of that class is Sophie, who wasn't quite crawling yet, sitting amongst the chaos.  A bigger baby started crawling in Sophie's direction and I watched as Sophie's little face lit up.  She reached her arms out toward the approaching baby.  But that bully of a baby plowed right over her and kept on going.  The anger I felt toward that other baby frightened me.  Of course, rationally, I knew that that baby hadn't done anything wrong.  But the mama bear in me wanted to hunt that child down (she was lost in the gaggle of babies and I had no idea which one had wronged my Sophie) and set her straight. I sat there, in that circle of mothers, as Sophie picked herself up and happily continued to look around.

I think what amazes me most about my eldest daughter is her ability to bounce back.  I have always been so afraid that people won't like me, that I'll be rejected somehow, that I have a hard time putting myself out there in the first place.  But Soph isn't like that.  On top of being cute, Sophie fearlessly, and with great vigor, puts herself out there.  She will talk to anyone, about anything.  And she has no qualms about announcing her feelings openly.  She will declare to a little girl she has just met at the park, "You're my best friend."  She loves everyone, and she assumes that everyone will genuinely love her back.  I have a lot to learn from this little six-year-old. 

Still, I am at a loss as to how to handle this boyfriend business with Sophie.  I know first-graders are too young to know what is means to fall in love or get married, but I don't like the idea of her only focusing on one friend, boy or girl.  On the other hand, I don't want to squash her excitement and I don't want to instill in her the fear that I'm now trying to overcome.  Plus, I know, in her future, there will be broken hearts.  Just a word of advice to those boys: watch out for mama bear.