A different child

Sundays have been wobbly before. But she's been like a different child today now that the mean piano teacher is no more. I first saw her at 11.30am when she came on to our church zoom. She was smiley, happy and chattering. She left after 20 minutes but was good. She tried to call me while I was finishing off in a work meeting at 6.30 and I managed to call her back a few minutes later.

There were only two of them in the boarding house for a lot of the day and only four by the end of the day - there's usually up to 8 at the weekend. She's enjoyed the space but also it felt a bit lonely as the remaining person isn't especially a good friend. However the staff member who came in (the junior school teachers take it in turns to do a duty shift at weekend with the boarders) did baking with her. She said "basically, I did the chocolate cake all by myself because he's not very into that kind of thing". When the other two children came back, after their tea, they all spent some time bombing round the "afro pitch" (it was too cute, I couldn't quite bring myself to correct her).

The piano teacher being out the picture made a huge difference, as did the mama top up. She was pensive a couple of times in the conversation. I asked if she was alright... "yes, I am just pondering things in my world".... Then proceeded to tell me about the developments in the very vivid imaginary world that exists in her head. She's told me over the weekend that the pony Polly we use to control her bad dreams and turn them happy has become real and is now an important friend with Bob, her other invisible friend. I asked her this afternoon if she's playing with Bob and Polly a lot and spending lots of time in her world. She said yes. But that her and A are also making up an imaginary Harry Potter game together and she hoped that would carry on because she enjoyed that. 

There were no tears at all today, just a happy girl. A proud of her crumble and chocolate cake, happy girl.