By Melissa Voelker 
“Is that your daughter out there in the pink shirt?” the mom sitting next to me asked.
“Yeah. She is,” I say back to her.
“Is she always that sweet?”
“Oh . . . well, yes. She is,” I reply almost apologetically. “She honestly is.”
“You can tell. I can just see the way she is with the other kids out there, helping them out and cheering them on . . . she is a natural out there too. She’s really good.”
It was our second soccer practice. Due to their age gap of 18 months, my son and daughter are on the same team. He is one of the youngest at just under three and half, and at almost five years old, she’s the oldest. The coaches also happen to be our lovely neighbors who have a daughter our son’s age on the team. Most of the kids are somewhere in the middle, right around age four.
I wasn’t sure how she’d take to being on the same team as my son, let alone being the oldest. I spoke with her about it ahead of time, and in her true, glass-half-full fashion she told me she loved the idea. She was super excited to be on her brother’s team and that she wanted to help the younger kids.
This is her first time playing soccer in a team setting and only her second time playing a team sport. She had played softball in the spring, and in that instance, she was the youngest by far. She was four and a half when the rest of her teammates were five and six; some girls even turned seven mid-season. They were so wonderful to her. They took her under their wings, made sure to help her understand the bases when she got a bit confused, and cheered her on when she hit the ball without using a tee!
She never seemed to let her age or experience level bother or defeat her. She knew she was the youngest, and even went by “little” as there was another girl on her team with her same name. She asked us to practice with her, stuck with it, and became quite the little lefty hitter. She loved her first experience on a team. Her coaches were constantly coming up to me and telling me how sweet she was and how much they loved having her on the team and watching her improve each week.
When soccer season came around, I knew she’d be no different: competitive, but compassionate; sweet, but fierce. There was a time when I was concerned she was a bit too sweet. I was afraid she’d become a people pleaser like I was (let’s face it, still am), or put her own wants and needs aside to make others happy (again, a trait she would have inherited from me).
She is always so quick to try to make someone feel better or make sure they are okay, but you dare try to take a toy away from her brother, and well, she won’t stand for that. That is her brother’s toy, and he wasn’t done with it yet. She’s never mean or nasty; simply strong and matter-of-fact. In more cases than not, she gets his toy back. There are times, though, when I will watch someone take something from her, and she won’t fight for it for herself. She seems to find her voice much easier when she is standing up for someone she loves.
I admire my daughter. She teaches me lessons every day, and I find myself wishing I could be more like her. Don’t get me wrong, she brings the sass and has a whine that can rival any nail on a chalkboard, but her sweet demeanor and strong-willed nature are what always shine through.
At 39 years old, I often wonder: How can she be so unbelievably strong-willed and out-lawyer any grown adult to get what she wants by using the most sophisticated logic and compelling arguments, yet be so gentle and kind at heart? She is the complete opposite of me in that way. The strength she exudes at just four and a half years old astounds me. I’ll admit, she can frustrate me to no end sometimes and has inherited the stubborn streak from both me and my husband.
But then, I’ll watch the way she interacts with her younger brother (most times) and think about how from the minute we brought him home from the hospital, she immediately became his best friend and his protector. She never once asked us to take him back to the hospital or threw fits because she had to share our attention. She instinctively grabbed his hand and showed him the way.
She consistently leads him throughout life, answers any questions he has (and there are a lot), shares her past experiences to settle his nerves on his first day of school or learning to ride a trike, or leaves her seat in the audience during his winter program when he is too scared to stand up, sits down next to him, whispers in his ear, and stays with him until he is strong enough to stand up there on his own. She knows exactly what toy to bring him when he gets himself worked up and can’t get himself out of it or gets a boo-boo and can’t stop crying.
I don’t know how we got so lucky with her, and I know we often take it for granted because it’s just how she’s always been. But when enough people feel compelled to pull me aside to tell me just how wonderful she is, I can’t help but take a step back, fill up with pride, and thank God for blessing me with her. She has softened me in many ways and even reminds me to take a deep breath and count to ten when she sees me start to get overwhelmed. She is wise beyond her years, and truly an old soul.
I can only hope I can be the best mom I can be for her every day. I pray I can be the support and strength for her that she is for everyone else. I need to help her not feel the weight of the world’s problems on her shoulders, but simply to just enjoy helping people. I need to be for her, what she is for other people.
I need to make sure she doesn’t feel overlooked because she is such an easy kid. I need to ensure that sass, as much as it can drive me up a wall, never goes away; that she always has the capacity to stick up for herself and what she believes in while still being the kind-hearted soul she has managed to be so early in her life. I hope I can help her grow into a strong, confident, caring woman because at four years old, she is teaching me those same lessons, and I am grateful for it.
by Amber Kuipers 
by Erin Wood 
