Write-O-Holic

My six year old son loves to write. He has written books, lists of
books he will write, pages of chapters, scripts and magazines. When he gets
into a writing groove there are papers all over the house. Stories in various
states of completion. Piles of half cut up pieces of paper. Sometimes he wants
loose leaf paper (he can never quite remember what it is called); sometimes it
is construction paper but lately it has been blank white paper. He has recently
decided that he is having a book fair. He gave up his TV time this morning to
begin creating these sheets of paper with thumbnails of the books that he is
going to distribute. He was in the process of making one for everyone in his
class. He was going to have them choose up to three books each. I told him that
this seemed like a lot of work but he was undeterred. I told him that if he
gave me one sheet maybe I could make copies of it for him so he wouldn’t have
to make ten of them himself. He really wanted to do it today so he decided that
he would ask his teacher to make the copies. My heart swells with pride and I
am in love with his imagination and his creativity. The cynical part of me is
waiting for the day when someone says something mean to him; something that
makes him feel badly about what he is doing. As much as I hope that this will
not occur any time soon, I am not so sure.

He is nothing less than excelling at his new school. He loves his
second grade teacher and she loves him. She had him nominated student of the
month. He has done extra handwriting work at home for her and brought in one of
his lists of books that he is going to write for her to see. His new school is
very small and all of the kids currently in his class were all together in
kindergarten and all together in first grade. It will be like this till sixth
grade when they are distributed to the high school in the next town over. All
the same kids, all together for six years. Insert small Hawaiian boy with weird
name who is blowing the standardized testing out of the water and is the
teacher’s pet. It is potentially a recipe for some bad feelings. He told me
that a couple of the girls had said mean things to him yesterday but it did not
affect his distribution of flyers today; he did not feel that he had to leave
anyone out due to how they had treated him.

I take heart in the fact that even though he is a sensitive guy (like
his Dad) he is pretty confident. He is a leader and his creative abilities have
made him someone that the other kids are drawn to. I don’t have the impression
that anyone has really said anything incredibly mean; at least nothing that has
come close to breaking his spirit. But I still worry for him and his
differentness. I know that he is enough not like the other kids that at some
point someone is going to point it out to him. I only hope that this does not
happen for quite some time.

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