Parent Teacher conferences last Tuesday!

And my voracious reader/budding writer got C’s in both those subjects. I was trying to be cool parent, but I broke. I turned to him and said, “Really? Come on! In Reading and Writing??”

C’s happen when you forget- every week- to turn in your assignments. Apparently. Course, I was a ‘C’ student up through college as well. Really, really hard to pay attention to people talking when worlds and others’ lives are occurring within your head. His teacher pointed behind her and said, ‘Yea, that’s his desk.’ A disaster. He’s very disorganized (do not notice me slumping guiltily in the tiny child-sized chair, please). She said she’s lecturing, looks at him, and he’s fidgeting and looking through papers. I’m thinking, holy crap, it’s contagious. He got…..my brain! He is so screwed. His reading teacher came over to comment on his amazing artwork- which is redeeming his grades with extra credit due to his wicked sense of humor. She still can’t place his reading level because he reads pretty advanced. I started buying H.G. Wells for him last year. And this year, he’s begun Tolkien. Maybe Victor Hugo next year? Mmmm.

I get home today and he asks if I want to read one of his stories. This is a first. He’s been drawing his stories up till now. He’d show me one simple drawing of a creature, and then go off into long, in depth-detail about that creature’s whole life and struggle. I’ve been telling him for years, “Dude, write that down!’ His brain is always going a million miles a minute. While you answer his question, he’s already a thousand more ahead of you. Thinking about me at his age and how ten-some years ago I’d have been labeled ADHD and put on meds, I have to wonder how many of those kids are actually just writers with stories dying to come out?

So I sit down and read his story. Vampires, of course. Somewhat better than zombies. (Our genres don’t really jive:)

I turned to him and said, ‘You did not write this. This line right here?’ Brilliant. So brilliant, I am absolutely not sharing it. It’s his. And he’s so proud, telling me that they made him stand up and read it out loud to his class. I am swimming in so much de ja vu that I can’t see. That was me in second grade, my weekly newest story share.

My kid’s a writer, too 🙂