Push

The other day I asked Louise what she wanted to learn, and she said she wanted to learn to knit. In fact, she said it so insistently that it was almost annoying, even though I've waited for that day ever since she was born. Alas, when we sat down to actually do it, she could only barely stand to do it. I'm not sure if it's the way I teach, or the fact that I sort of take up all the space of knitting in our family (I do knit a lot), or if she's just not really ready. I try to be endlessly patient as she spews all sorts of nastiness and general frustration my way ("why do you have to control every last thing my fingers do?" and "I _know_how to do that!" are two common ones. She knows it all already, there's nothing she wants to ask me. So I just keep my mouth shut until she wants to know something, even as I'm watching her grab the string from the wrong side, or not hold onto it with enough tension to be able to grab it at all. Then, as the frustration mounts, she throws the whole thing at me and screams, "you fix it, I can't do it" and thuds backwards onto the couch. I gently pick it back up, put it back together, show it to her again as she says "I know how to do that!"

At dinner I told her that I wasn't quite sure what to do when she gets frustrated, if I should push or if I should just let her quit.

"Push," she said immediately. So I will.