It's black and it's white, it's wrong and it's right....

No, I am not referring to the Katy Perry song, but when I hear thse lines I do think of Kayleigh because she did think in very Black and White ways.

In Kindergarten Kayleigh fell out with a couple of girls for her insistence on not 'breaking the rules' in regards of going out of bounds. The girls wanted to play under a tree that would have been no futher than a couple of metres outside what Kayleigh had been told was the 'out of bounds' line. The girls really wanted to play under the tree as it was hot, but Kayleigh refused point blank to go past the line. In her mind it was 'wrong' and she didn't want to do the wrong thing. There was no way she was going to go outside the line, no matter how much she wanted to play with her friends.

The same went when a boy kept hitting her in year 1, for no real reason. We told Kayleigh to just punch him back so he would stop (I know, we are such bad parents!) but Kayleigh refused point blank to hit this kid back becuase the terachers had told them it was wrong. She would rather get hit by this kid then defend herself becuase she was told it was not the right thing to do and she would get into trouble. There was no grey in her world - it was either right, or wrong.

She did settle slightly with some shades of 'grey' as she got older, but she was always very insistant on doing the right thing. If it came to putting her principles on the line, she always chose what she believed was the right thing to do. She couldn't be influenced by others to do what she believed was the wrong thing. She wanted to avoid problems and the issues that came with crossing the line, so she rarely every went over it. I know she tried hard to please others by doing the 'right' things, but she never felt good by doing what she pereceived to be the wrong thing, so she never pushed it.