Kayla 3 years 10 months

Kayla is a big sister now and she is proud of it! She loves her new baby sister and likes to hold and rock her. She is a big help. Kayla is one of the most active children in her preschool class, and loves to ride her bike around and around the block. She is OK at playing catch, shooting mini-basketballs and kicking the mini-soccer ball but tends to get bored easily. We are working with her on this and it will be easier because we just bought our first house so she can play in the yard more.

Kayla likes to tell people about things she has done. We listen to her telling stories with great interest and ask questions to prompt her to fill in more interesting details. She is receptive to new words and phrases and has a very expressive vocabulary. Sometimes she likes to imitate the baby’s sounds back to her little sister which is cute but we try not to let her do it too much so it doesn’t affect her own language development.

Kayla brings such joy to our lives. Recently though we had a situation that scared us both where she started playing in the clothes racks at the department store and got lost. Someone that worked in the store found her and as we were franticly looking for her herd over the loud speaker "A little girl named Kayla has been found." Needless to say she was a little clingy the next few weeks and won’t ever do that again. Kayla is pretty cooperative and friendly, and able to focus well on tasks, but sometimes she is somewhat anxious and unsure of herself in basic social situations. She can be a bit clingy with her preschool teacher, and reluctant to join in some of the activities. But usually after some encouragement she will join in. Kayla has one or two special little friends in preschool and plays cooperatively and non-aggressively with them which we are happy with. I think we just need to have more play dates at home to encourage better friendships. I think Kayla falls in between the over controlled and resilient categories for personality types.