Mia, 4.5 years

Mia moved up to the older kindergarten group six weeks ago. The teachers describe her as calm, attentive, helpful with the younger ones, and Petra is thrown every time because at home she sees a different child. From pickup onward it's a fight: the trousers are wrong, the sock scratches, dinner is disgusting even though she ate it yesterday. Twice in the last ten days she has hit her mum when something was taken away. That same Mia opens fire with questions the moment she settles, about animals, about space, about why the sky is blue, and she'll listen to an answer for five minutes without interrupting. The afternoon nap went three months ago and bedtime has stretched into forty minutes of stalling ever since. Petra's real worry isn't the behaviour itself, it's not knowing whether this is ordinary for four and a half or something to raise with the pediatrician.