I've been asking God to help me condescend to my daughter. Or, now that I think about it, maybe God is the one who has been asking me to condescend to her.

She's seven and the things that cause her grief are so minor that it takes an act of my will not to totally dismiss her and send her from the room sometimes (like her friends who call her "Poop-head" and just won't stop calling her that even though she asks them to stop). The words, "That's no big deal" almost slide right off my tongue when she complains about something like this.

My daughter's a talker. She's a daughter, after all. She's not even sure what she wants to talk about sometimes. But it's clear that she needs to talk because she'll just kind of wander into the room that I'm in, situate herself in front of me (or as near to 'in front of me' as she can get), think of something random, interrupt me to tell me about it, then, once she has my attention, she'll take obvious pains to try and think of something else to tell me about real quick, hoping to coax me into conversation because she needs the face time. It's times like this when she doesn't care what she's talking to me about, only that she is talking, when it's especially hard not to send her from the room and say something like "Come back when you have real things to talk about."

But, she's only seven, so it may be a while before she has any "real things" to talk about. I've spent quite a bit of time with girls twice her age and they still don't have "real things" to talk about, either, not when I compare what causes them grief to what adult ladies I know are truly grieving over moment to moment.

But my daughter needs me to address the heart of her issues, even as "small" as the issues themselves are right now compared to what they will be one day. Because the same friends who call her "Poop-head" may one day be the ones who call her "Slut" may one day be the ones who call her "Lazy" for being a housewife or whatever.

Her issues are very real to her, so I am asking the Lord (or maybe He is asking me), to make those issues very real to me.

And, Lord, help me do it, for the adult-Norah's sake.