Was she sitting on her heels with her big toes tucked like that?
Yep, this is the style. Though I thought it would change a bit as she got older. I have some other pictures of her with her toes like this :)
One of the things I learned as I got older was that almost no adult actually knows what they are doing.
Fake it til you make it - more like, fake it til you die and hope that no one noticed.
I know what you mean. I don't blame my parents for it - I knew it as a child that they had other stuff in their lives going on. As a result, I became very independent, but that isn't always a good thing.