Three Beasties

I is for Interesting Z is for Zany

Isabel is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bundle of happy energy and delightful wonder. She is doing well in school, is a perfectionist like her big sister, plays soccer with fearless vigor, loves Star Wars like her brother, is listed under the dictionary under the word 'pink,' is mischevious, and has a laugh that makes me feel wonderfully alive.

Iz loves to draw, her imagination is vivid, and her hand is steady. She works at her own pace, and can focus for long periods of time on anything artistic. However if you are asking her to put on socks, you might have to repeat the suggestion seven times before she goes, "Oh yeah," and disappears into her room for half an hour. Afterward she will come downstairs, still sockless. If one dares ask why, you will get a creative explanation of how there are no socks to be found.

She loves to play with her brother, her best friend next door, and tag along whenever her big sister has friends over. She digs mud pies, and has a keen interest in rocks and small animals.  She wants to play baseball as well as soccer next year, and is looking forward to building sandcastles on the beach and going to the mountains to play in the stream. In other words, she is very well-rounded.

She's sharp and sassy when being told to do something by anyone besides me. Her room is a whirlwind disaster of dolls and stuffed animals and clothes and books, somehow eclipsing the sheer chaotic entropy of her brother's room. She is at times sneaky and devious, having learned the loopholes in the system (third child) but she comes clean with easy grace, and nods at me with those big blue eyes and promises to be good.  And I believe her every time.

I think she's the happiest creature on the planet at any given moment - unless I'm making her learn her spelling words. But now it's summer, and she is working on a fiction project with me, and there is nothing but limitless days ahead.

K is for Keen

Kelly had a remarkable first year at Davidson International Baccalaureate Middle School. Like her brother, she completed the year with straight A's in all courses, including some subjects she'd never taken before, like Spanish and Keyboarding. She is one of three students who were 'A Honor Roll' for the entire grade level. She competed in the Science Olympiad and played Classic soccer for the full year. Her reports were sharp and well-written, her artwork was beautiful, and her work ethic was first rate. The homework load was steep—we knew that going in—but Kelly handled every assignment without my assistance, and still managed three soccer training sessions a week, plus helped me coach her little sister's team. That meant soccer five days a week for her, plus games, plus all the extracurriculars that go with having an artist dad: journaling, sketchbooks, time in the studio, and tons of extra reading.

I don't always know how to congratulate her for her continued and persistent excellence. On the one hand, I don't want to gush all the time—and quite frankly, I am blown away more often than not, so I fear that I default to the 'quietly appreciative' with knowing pats, and nods of 'well done.' On the other hand, I know a thing or two about performing at a high level without being appreciated—and I remember that feeling that getting good grades was just expected, and no longer noteworthy.

So I have tried to forge a new dynamic: quietly appreciating Kelly's hard-working approach without making too much of a fuss over every little thing, but then sprinkling in positive feedback in short intense moments where I ask her to look at me, focus on what I'm saying and then verbally acknowledge how proud I am of her on a day to day basis, whether it be remarking on a good report, or hard work at soccer, or for taking the time to really help one of her siblings with their homework. And then on a broader level, taking her aside to tell her how much I appreciate her hard work on a monthly level. And then something more elaborate on a quarter level, after report cards: a big dinner, a day out on the lake, etc. And then a year-end celebration and reward of technology, this year an iPhone, because it really is quite remarkable that she made it through this rigorous program without getting any B's. A good deal of her very smart and very competitive friends got tripped up by a stern keyboarding teacher, or an equally strict foreign language instructor. 

I hope she looks back at her remarkable childhood one day and reads this blog, and all these posts, and can then grasp just how phenomenally proud I am of her.

A is for Alex

Alexander completed a remarkable year in his third grade Talent Development class with Mrs. Poling. On Friday, the last day of school, he walked into the house beaming ear to ear and handed me a brown envelope with his grades inside. I opened the piece of paper and marveled at the end result of his hard work: All A's in every subject, in every quarter.

I am so proud of his dedication and focus. It's not the easiest thing in the world to be smart in third grade—it's certainly not the 'cool thing' for a boy—but he has embraced science and math, he reads voraciously, and I can almost read his lefty handwriting when I get him to slow down and space things properly. 

As the second child, three years behind a sibling who is quite gifted and annoyingly smart, he could easily have just coasted on lowered expectations and accepted that no one was ever going to be as smart as Kelly seemed to be.  But when I compared his EOG scores to Kelly's third grade scores, I had to pull him aside and tell him (in a very grave voice) that he had exceeded his sister's marks in both mathematics and reading comprehension, hitting 98th percentile in both.

He looked at me with his little innocent expression of wide-eyed wonder and I said in all the seriousness that I could muster, "Yes, I'm sorry son. You're smarter than Kelly."