Metamorphosis of a Relationship

When my oldest child, a son, was born, I had a reservoir of knowledge to impart. I'd spent my teenage years babysitting and running a nursery, plus working in a library. In college, I earned a degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education. I was armed and waiting for motherhood.

For just over two and a half years, he was there - alone - to receive all the attention and knowledge that I had prepared. As a result he had heard a huge pile of stories, gone to many enriching places, and been spoken to more than most children his age. He in turn talked - ALL THE TIME - which became rather wearing, but that is a story for another day.

The relationship of me imparting knowledge and him learning was established. As he went to preschool others began to teach him, but they sent home so many clues, that I was well aware of what he was learning. And I often supplemented it. (I still had energy then. And only three kids.)

In kindergarten, I expected that my role as number one teacher would change. Not so much. I learned quickly that the teacher expected me to teach the sight words and counting/math facts. Well she said drill, but it sure seemed like teach. First grade added the Spalding Method phonograms. I now understood all the phonetics stuff that I hadn't understood as a first or second grader, and I did my best to impart it to him as we sat on the stairs each afternoon waiting to leave and catch the school bus. He didn't like it much. I didn't either, but we persevered and he became a reader.

One July day, I picked up The Boxcar Children from the library, and he was off into reading chapter books. I was then in charge of supplying his reading habit, a task that quickly became daunting as he was a fast reader, and I was reading everything before he did. Some I had read in the past, but many were read a few days before him.

Our mother/son relationship was strained by those sight words and math facts. Thankfully God was aware and assigned me to be his Cub Scout Leader. Suddenly I found a new tool for dealing with this combative learner (who while ironically objecting to almost everything else I did with him pre-Cub Scouts, didn't mind that I was killing myself to supply him books). With the award system of Cub Scouting, I  enticed him to learn more and varied bodies of information. We worked hard. We received awards. We developed good relationship that has lasted. I was only a little crazy.

At about the same time, his third grade teacher opened her bookshelf and the world of Goosebumps books to him. Great pieces of literature they are not, but frankly we all deserve time to devour popcorn books -light, airy, easy to crunch down, and not particularly filling, but always in ample supply.

Right then I determined I was not going to be capable of reading everything my children read before they read it. I knew I had taught them about choosing well and putting aside things that were inappropriate, so I consciously released myself from the burden of being the only person to supply information to my children. Still I didn't recognize the implications of that completely necessary decision.

My son set off learning things on his own. He devoured the Red Wall series, the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, everything Star Wars, Harry Potter, and moved into books on the Revolution and World War II. Shocked and pleased would describe me the day I learned he had read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as his 7th grade nonfiction book. Who reads 1,000 page books for a book report project? My son apparently. Perhaps my husband's son, he was the one who read books about war and planes in middle school. I was busy reading every mystery book I could lay my hands on at that point in my life (and I can only believe that I missed Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh because I wasn't really allowed to go upstairs to the adult collection - library policy. Stupid one.)

My husband and I supported his love of Revolutionary War facts by taping all of the PBS series, Liberty's Kids, and by putting together a Paul Revere costume for him for Halloween in first grade.

And yes we supported his choice of Benedict Arnold for a fifth grade research project. We felt pride when he placed third in the nation in the Academic Pentathlon in the Super Quiz covering the Revolution as an eighth grader.

So I should never be surprised by what happened last night, but I was.

I was sitting at the computer helping another son with his fifth grade research project on the Constitution and responsible citizenship. In our search for sources we found a website that mentioned a really cool name Lucius Q Cincinnatus. Now I know that my oldest son holds in his head far more knowledge on civilizations ancient to modern and forms of government that I will ever care to know, but some how I thought that maybe this time I would stump him.

I yelled, "Do you know who Lucius Q Cincinnatus is?" He walked in the room, said yes, reached over the top of me and typed Society of Cincinnatus into a search engine and said, "He is a Roman who the influenced the leaders of the Revolution." And then he walked out.

Lucius Q Cincinnatus. Huh. I never knew that...

Today I continue to marvel. Not so much that he knows stuff that I don't know, I was obviously aware of that. No I marveled and wondered at how under my nose he has become a person wholly of his own. A person full of feelings, passions, knowledge, and abilities that I influenced greatly once and perhaps importantly still influence now, but a person standing on his own.


It is amazing. It is good. We are getting tired of each other. The time is rapidly coming for him to move out of the house. It is heartening to know he can learn and grow on his own. I want him to be a man capable of great things, who comes back to visit me, who calls me and shares parts of his life with me, but who lives his own life in his own place, paid for by his own work.

I will miss him, but it will be good...for both of us.