Raising Children

       I know a little girl, at least according to her birth certificate, she is still a little girl born May 6, 2004, but nothing about her behavior would validate that. For the purposes of this communication, I will call her Liza. Liza is seven years old in the second grade and can give her mother a migraine headache without breaking a sweat.
     Let me just tell you a few of her most recent antics. Mom made arrangements to have Liza's hair braided, to maintain a well-groomed appearance at the start of school. Braiding is an African American staple for grooming little girl's hair and a good "cornrowing" session can take hours. The process was set up to begin at 11:30 and every 30 minutes, Mom texted the hairdresser to learn of the progress. After three hours of getting a return text of "not yet", she walked up to the home where her daughter was to be groomed, but no one answered the door. As Mom turned to leave, her daughter, Liza, and the young stylist ran to meet her from down the street. After a brief greeting, Mom and Liza walked home, during which time, Liza showed Mom her new bracelet that she had gotten at the mall while accompanying the stylist and the stylist Mom to the mall. Further questioning revealed that not only had the seven year old visited the mall (without permission) for several hours, she had been "dropped off" at a house where a group of teens (her stylist peers) were "hanging out" before returning to yet another place to get her hair braided. Liza spoke proudly and boldly of her adventures despite her mom's increasing anger and my utter disbelief. I was visiting at Mom's house during all of this and I witnessed Mom's due dilligence in calling the stylist often to check on the hair braiding progress. We both had concern about why the hair braiding was taking so long.
       This child's boldness does not reflect Mom's hesitance to discipline her, in fact,Liza had been disciplined earlier in the week for "cursing" a classmate on the first day of school. The feud was a carryover from the first grade when Liza decided that she did not like the classmate and was angry that they were assigned to the same second grade. Mom was informed of her daughter's "grown" behavior by a stressed teacher's aide. Mom took a belt to Liza's backside, told her about her behavior and what would not be tolerated and sent her to her room. The troubling thing is that Liza is defiant. While in her room, she wrote a note stating "I am running away" and marched into her Mom's room and placed it on the bed beside her resting Mother; it was after 7pm -"dust dark" my grandmother would say.
Mom followed Liza through the house and watched as the child opened the door to leave -- TO LEAVE!!!!!!
      Mom called me seeking wisdom about what she should do. I was 150 miles away so I could not physically deal with the prococious child and Mom was in tears and too angry to initiate discipline without an intent to kill. I told her not to cry in front of the child, not to lock the child out of the house or in her room. Frankly, I had nothing to tell her in so far as what to do, just what not to do.