Hijacked!

I'm totally hijacking Jessica's blog today. With how crazy busy she's been, I'm laying 5-1 odds that she won't notice for at least 3 days. Any takers? Anyone?

Things have been absolutely madness, but in a good way. Riley's been working through first grade. I'm pretty sure that I didn't have to do half the stuff he does when I was his age, but he's generally a good sport about it all. It does sometimes make me wonder if we should have kept him at home for just one more year. He and I have the same issue when it comes to school: We're early attenders.

See, my birthday is in September. Riley's birthday is in August. So, when it was time to start school, we were both 4, about to turn 5. (Side note: having your 18th birthday in a dorm, surrounded by people you've known for 3 weeks is not the preferred method of reaching adulthood.) When I was that age, I didn't vocalize all that much or all that clearly, so I think my parents' intentions were to put me into kindergarten early, where they had a speech program, and then possibly repeat it the next year. That didn't happen. As it turned out, it wasn't that I couldn't speak, it was that I didn't say anything unless I had something to say. So I went into first grade the next year. I won't pretend that it was all roses. I was bright, but still young. It seems that I'd get frustrated more easily than the other kids, and my handwriting was terrible. (Part of that I blame on being a lefty). I didn't get my driver's license until junior year, and there were only a handful of people younger than me during any given year. Still, I made it, with a few scars. (A solid year of handwriting grades of "D, needs to try harder" in elementary school still burns.)

And then there's Riley. He has more energy than I ever had, his memory is insanely good, and he reads like crazy, but he struggles with classwork. Not because he doesn't understand stuff, but because his mind and body are constantly going 90 miles an hour. When he slows down, the writing becomes clearer, but he isn't built for slow. He didn't learn to walk, he learned to run. This is the kid who had no problem riding a bike for a mile and a half straight just a week after successfully riding without training wheels. Slow is just not part of his make-up. It isn't who he is. And I think I sometime forget that.

It means trying new things to help him stay focused. For example, after talking with Jess's cousin who works at an occupational therapist's clinic, we tried sitting him on a yoga ball when doing his homework. It seemed to help him concentrate while still being able to wiggle. We mentioned that at a parent-teacher conference, and they found one for him. Since then, I've seen improvement in his writing. Don't know if it will last, but it's working for now.

But it also means that once he decides to do something, he goes at it full throttle and gets more out of it. I don't think he'll ever be paralyzed by fear into inaction. His kindness always runs full-throttle too. He's always the last one on the bus, but only for the same reason he's the last one out the door of his class- he know he's going to get on, but he wants to make sure everyone else gets on too. He's the first to give hugs, the first to ask if someone is okay, and the first to try to help.

So instead of always asking him to slow down to everyone else's pace, I'm going to work on coming up to Riley's speed more often. I think I'm going to try to be full-throttle kind, too. Life's too short to be stuck in 2nd gear.