Dear Olivia,
You truly make your mother and father proud.
You have become such a great kid that I feel so grateful.
Yesterday I received a phone call at home from your school teacher. She has never called our house before. When she first called I thought she was going to tell me you missed the bus home, instead she said, "do you have a minute? I need to share something that happened at school today!"
My heart dropped. Oh no - is everything OK?
Turns out everything is more than okay. Mrs. Gallagher was calling me to personally tell me all the wonderful traits she has seen from YOU and this one occusian almost moved her to tears.
There are two little girls in your classroom that are competing to be Your best friend. To some, this would not be a problem, but to Olivia this was making her a little bit anxious. Each girl would become upset at you for talking to the other girl. You did not want to hurt anybody's feelings so you had a hard time handling this. You felt torn in the middle of two girls competing over your attention. You actually stayed home from school Wednesday with a "tummy ache," but I think you couldn't handle the stress anymore.
Your awesome teacher picked up on it. I also encouraged you to write Mrs. Gallagher a note asking for guidance. And you did. (In your best cursive)
Once read, Mrs. Gallagher pulled you aside at recess and talked with you about how you can handle it and gave you really great advice. You soaked up all the encouragement Mrs. Gallagher gave you.
This is The part where Mrs. Gallagher was moved to tears. She sent the three of you girls out into the hallway the last 10 minutes of school so you could work it out.
She said Olivia's leadership skills, kind heart, and Christianity approach were remarkable.
You came up several activities for you three girls to do in the hallway.
The first thing you came up was having you three girls interlock arms and then try to get out of the circle. I think this was your idea of a trust exercise.
And then You had each girl say something mean to each other so they could each feel their feelings get hurt and how that is not fun for anybody.
Finally, you wrapped up the activity with each girl saying something nice to each other so the girls could experience kindness from each other. You then concluded that kindness is much more fun than meanness and that there is room for EVERYONE to be friends. The girls agreed.
Mrs. Gallagher was so moved by her second grade capacity to orchestrate a successful meeting with her two friends. She called me to share the news.
I feel so proud. This is the stuff that matters to your dad and I. Sure, we care about good grades. But more importantly we care about your character. And you have great character. Keep up the great work Olivia and never lose that big heart of yours.
Ps - you're an awesome big sister too. You are always the first to offer me a hand without being asked.
We love you,
mom and dad
