One Cool Kid

You know, Davan is a pretty cool kid. I'm really lucky. Gymnastics saga and oversensitivity aside, I really enjoy being around her quite a lot. Yeah, she has her quirks. Sometimes they annoy the Hades out of me. But, really, there is so much good and enjoyable there.

Davan has done her own reading about health - exercise and food and all - and come to her own conclusions. She helps me to remember what I want to accomplish. She does yoga with me, goes shopping without ever once asking for junk food and even helps unload at the end.

Probably because of her super-sensitivity, she really tries not to hurt people's feelings.

She loves being helpful and we've spent a lot of nice time working together on chores or in the kitchen. Time spent reading together, listening to each other learn piano, playing games, eating, reading across form each other (different than reading together) and going for walks are also very enjoyable.

I'm so lucky to have a person that lives with me that shares so many of my goals and interests. And, frankly, I'm lucky that she has her own interests, as well, because there is only so much time two people can spend in each other's immediate company.

Anthony, of course, is a great partner and my for life companion. I greatly value my time with him, as well. Davan will move on and Anthony will not. However, at this point in our lives, my time with Davan is more intense, as it has been sense she was born. We just have a lot more time with each other and, especially when she was a baby/toddler/preschooler, she had so much need of me. Thank goodness Anthony was there to support and distract at that time, too.

I'm so glad that Davan homeschools and we get our time together. With 12 hours a gymnastics a week and time with friends, if she were going to school, I'd hardly see her, it seems. And she would not be learning valuable lessons like how to entertain herself and how to get along with her crazy mom.

Davan has a friend, I, who goes to school, does gymnastics, does drama, takes voice lessons and takes piano lessons. She's really into drama, doing it many hours a week, like gymnastics. This is a bright and imaginative little girl. Over the summer, she and Davan played together regularly (once the series of drama camps ended) for hours on end and had a great time. I, though, now only has a few free hours a week.

Her mom tells me that at the end of summer, when drama was over and gymnastics was on break, I sort of wandered around the house at loose ends, not knowing what to do with herself. With all the structured activities, she's never learned how to entertain herself.

There was a study done once that said that a child who said, "I'm bored," more than his peers would be more likely to experiment with drugs. I can see that. But, I think that some parents take that to mean that they need to keep their child constantly scheduled so there isn't time to be bored. What I think it means is that a child needs to learn what to do with themselves when they aren't being entertained. And they need to do that when they are little, but not too little, rather than wait until their preteen/teen years when they might have access to drugs.

I believe that a lot of what happens is that kids get over scheduled when they are young, then they burn out on those activities and want to quit, usually around middle school. Now, they have time to be bored, but it's a bad time to be bored with drugs available. It's too easy to fall into the wrong crowd at this point rather than develop hobbies.

I expect Davan's hobbies to change over time, but now, I'd say that her personal (rather than group or structured activities) hobbies are drawing, reading, imaginative play, acrobatics and piano. She has lots of ways to fill unstructured time.

Boy, this post morphed over the length of it. Still, at the end, I'd say the point is the same. Davan is a cool kid. I think homeschooling has had a lot to do with that. Not that a kid can't be cool who goes to school, too, but I think it's more challenging to stay true to one's self in school.

So, go on Davan, with your imagination and keen intellect. Go on with doing what you think is right. Go on with your perpetual motion. Go on with your quirks and ultra sensitivity. I love you and think you're pretty awesome.