Day 19

Today's post comes with a little parental bragging. Now I don't want to take too much credit here, because I think kids are sometimes born with certain inherent talents, and certain inherent challenges, for that matter. I have three VERY different kids, despite parenting skills and techniques that are pretty consistent. Sometimes all you can do is give them choices and opportunities, and hope they make the most of them.

My youngest son is six. He's in first grade. He's an advanced reader. Like, really advanced. Even before starting kindergarten, he was able to read pretty much anything we put in front of him. Now in first grade, it's already hard to find him reading material.

In fact, his first grade teacher has criteria for rating books as "too easy," "too hard," or "just right." One night I decided to try to find a book that met the criteria for "too hard." I kept pulling harder and harder books off our well-stocked bookshelves, until eventually I found something that was "too hard." The only problem? It was the hardest book I could find in the house, a Pulitzer Prize winning tome called Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, that intertwines art, music, mathematics, and philosophy in ways that are sometimes over my head. Here's a video of him reading from it:

So anyway, we've been looking for books to read to him at bedtime that are interesting and challenging enough for him, but that aren't beyond him on an emotional level.

We had a misfire on this front recently. Since he's interested in cats right now, we got a chapter book called The Cats of Roxville Station from the library. It wasn't that the book was too hard. But if you read the Amazon reviews you'll see that it covers some pretty tough subject matter. When several kittens died, our poor little guy was absolutely devastated.

He understood that it wasn't real, but it really affected him. He felt especially bad for those kittens because they'd never get a chance to grow up and live as cats.

After quite a lot of talking and crying and attempts at calming, I asked him if it would make him feel better if he could help some real live kittens. He thought that maybe that would.

It took a little while for us to get around to this, but he didn't let me forget. Today we visited some real live kittens and cats in a local animal shelter. There was lots of petting and lots of purring.

I donated some money while we were there. My little guy brought some of his own money to donate too. He did feel better.