Thoughts on my pre-teen

I was told I had to write a letter about my daughter and send it with her to school:

Alison is a curious creature of unknown origin. She has confounded modern science and her parents since the day of her arrival on our planet. No one can argue that Alison cuts her own path through uncharted territory and her creativity and originality delight her family. Her parents have had enough sense to realize early on that Alison does what Alison does, the way SHE does it, and to get in her way is to court disaster. (I must add that her parents do maintain the right to reign her in as needed during the teen years.)

When Alison was very young, she would plague her parents with inventions. They would find three-dimensional creations all over the house and be treated to daily demonstrations of all types of new machines. Her parents nearly went bankrupt keeping enough tape, string and scissors around to quench Alison's insatiable thirst for creativity. She even invented her own country (where the men had the babies) when she was four. Alison's science experiments were unrelenting, as she was constantly mixing things together, using planes and fulcrums and levers, prisms and all manner of other paraphernalia. When she was three, her mother, exasperated, yelled at her to get to bed. “But I want to LEARN!!!” was how she replied. She got to stay up another ten minutes to play school. Alas, Alison abandoned science when she turned nine, announcing that science was no longer “cool”. She replaced her love of science with a love of literature and knitting. JK Rowling replaced Bill Nye the Science Guy as her all-time hero.

Alison's smile and delightful conversation are always welcome in the Ireland household. She has strong opinions on religion, politics, the environment and what her mother should and should not wear. Although she often seems to think her mother has a very low IQ and is almost completely clueless, nevertheless her mother knows a wonderful daughter when she sees one.

Alison is passionate about many subjects including but not limited to saving the whales, evicting humans from Madigascar to make way for the lemurs, keeping litter off our highways and making sure little brothers are seen and not heard. Her mother overheard Alison at age four, telling someone that she was going to join Greenpeace and “crush ships that bother animals”.

Although Alison as of late has adopted somewhat of a shy demeanor at school, she is anything but shy at home. She rules her brothers with an iron fist and expresses her opinions in no uncertain terms. She keeps her parents in line, as all ambitious eldest daughters should. Her parents get away with nothing. Her mother is no longer allowed to ride the shopping cart, even under the cover of darkness, whether or not Alison is in her presence. The last time she tried such a ridiculous act, she was loudly admonished and flogged with a shopping flier by her horrified daughter.

At home, Alison has shown herself to be quite responsible. She gets herself and her dog up at the ungodly hour of 5:45, gets herself and her brothers ready for school, and even occasionally wakes her mother up -although often begrudgingly- with a fresh cup of coffee before she trudges off to school with her unruly brothers in search of the school bus. She does her own laundry and homework, and occasionally washes some dishes. She makes lunches for herself and her brothers for subsistence wages. Alison proves to be very frugal, and surprisingly non-materialistic. She makes do with what she has, spends her money wisely and thinks before she makes a purchase. Alison has a highly-developed ability to roll her eyes. She thinks her mother doesn't notice. But she does.

Alison is a wise and wonderful young lady and her parents are incredibly proud to share a household with her. We love you, Alison!