If there’s one thing that Isak takes after me, it’s his love of reading. His goal is to read the most this school year, as they’re being challenged to read at least 30 minutes a day. He has surpassed that on his own and is reading anywhere from an hour to 2 hours a night at bedtime. His assigned books are the Goosebumps books, which he’s on the second book now, but additionally, he’s finally gotten confident enough in his reading to tackle Harry Potter. He’s on his second book now, and I’m so excited that he finally gets to experience Harry Potter the way it was meant to be experienced, in book form.

Tonight he started reading without being told and being the mean mom I am, I interrupted him to brush his teeth for bed. I guess the 2nd Goosebumps book is good, because he can’t put it down…literally!

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Anja is so much of a lookalike to her father but possesses many similarities to me in her personality - at least as a child.  I promise, I no longer scream at the top of my lungs, usually.  Unless maybe there’s a giant beetle climbing up my blanket very quickly.   Other than her physical feature, that’s the other way I’m significantly different from her - she picked up that same beetle a few days earlier and walked it outside as she told him that her mom really doesn’t like bugs in the house.

However, Isak - he’s my “mini-me” in his looks but his personality is, for the most part, very different from mine.   He gets his coordination (or lack thereof), sensitivity and his inclination toward music (both in playing and in listening) from me.  What he most certainly does NOT get from me is his academic strength.  I never really liked school, except maybe grammar and band.

Today we got a letter from the school reporting a required assessment of his language skills in case he needed extra help in English as he’s from a home with two languages.  How proud was I when I read the recommendation of his gifted education teacher: “Add classroom differentiation to accommodate his high math skills.  He is above grade level in his class work.  He needs time and opportunity to develop creative/critical-thinking skills as he continues in gifted education.”

I’m such a proud mamma!!

Last night during dinner, I asked Isak what he did in school that day.  He said, “We didn’t have reading this morning.  Instead, we had science questions!”  Isak has commented several times to me that they don’t have science in school and he really wishes they did, so I knew this would be a lot of fun for him.  Science.  I hated science.

“My question was, ‘Is Antarctica colder than Iceland?’”

“And?  What did you find out?”

“Antarctica IS colder than Iceland.”

“Well, how do you know that?”

“Because Iceland is kept warm by the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Mexico.”

Blink blink.

“Uhhh.  Wow!  Did you read that in a book?”

“No, I Googled it.”

Back when I was a kid, we had to go to the library! And look up our answers in encyclopedias!  Using the Dewey Decimal System!  And walk backward, uphill, both ways in the snow!  With no shoes!

I now present to you a conversation illustrating some of the differences of my very wild and illogical daughter and my very serious and thoughtful son.

Anja hands me the above letter and declares she is going to Iceland.

Mom: How are you going to get to Iceland?
Anja: Probably an airplane, though.
Mom: How are you going to pay for it?
Anja: I’m going to get all my money and I’m going to go pay for it on the boat.
Isak: How are you going to get to the ocean without a car?
Anja: I’ll ride my bike and take it on the boat.
Isak: And what if you don’t have enough money?
Anja: I will. I’m going to bring all my money. Member? I want to go back to Iceland. Member? Cause me and you went to the store all by ourself, and we bought those things that light up? Member? That’s why I want to go back to Iceland. You want to go back with me, Isak?
Me: How long are you going to be gone?
Anja: I’m going to come back home, don’t worry. I’m going to come back home in 15 days.
Isak: Where will we live?
Anja: At Amma and Afi’s.
Isak: Well, how will they find us?
Anja: We’ll go to their house, because I remember. I remember their kitchen and their yard.
Isak: And how will you get so far from the airport?
Anja: I’m not going to the airport. I’m going at the boat, and I’m going to ride my bicycle. [duh!]
Isak: What if it falls off the boat?
Anja: I’m going to go inside the boat. And I’m going to hold my bike.
Isak: What if it’s not a regular boat? What if it’s a speedboat? Without a top?
Anja: I’m going to take it, then I’m going to the airport.
Isak: And what if you don’t have enough money? Cause it’s usually, like, 100. [no currency specified, just "100".]
Anja: I’m going to spend all my money because I’m going to bring my piggy bank. You wanna come with me? To buy those lightup things?
Isak: Nah, because how will we even know which house is Amma’s?
Anja: I know which house is Amma’s.
Isak: But how will you know what street she’s on?
Anja: Because remember that playground that’s just across the street?
Isak: But what if we can’t find the playground?
Anja: We will.
Isak: But what if we can’t?
Anja: We’re taking our bikes.
Isak: But what if we can’t get there on our bikes?

And to that, Anja had no answer but moved just as quickly onto the next conversation involving what structure they would build with their Tinkertoys next.

I’m thinking the hardest part of parenting has got to be dealing with bullies.  Or rather parenting a kid being bullied.  It’s hard because we aren’t sure what to do.

He’s almost 8.  He comes home from school, does some homework, and then disappears outside to play with his “friends”.  Every day he inevitably comes home angry after a couple of hours and slumps into a chair at the table so we can ask him what’s going on.  Every day there’s a new story.  So-and-so was my friend yesterday but today he’s mean.  I wanted to play a game that I made up but my friend didn’t want to follow the rules and now he won’t play with me.
I can understand those fights.  But he comes home telling me an older kid is trying to punch him in the stomach, that they’re stealing his things, they’re calling him stupid, an idiot, etc.  And the one older kid is turning into a neighborhood gang.  Last weekend a kid knocked on the front door to tattle and say that Isak threw a rock at another kid just now.  Problem was, Isak was sitting in the kitchen eating toast, and had been there for a good hour.  Long story short, that kid got an earful from me and was sent on his way.

And on it has gone since then.   Yesterday, Isak came in, once again, slumped at the table and said how the kids are stealing his things and calling him names and trying to hit him and making up lies about him.  I asked about it and he told me they were trying to say he hit one of them with a rock (this is an ongoing theme around here, the rock story - nice, huh?) when he did not hit him with a rock, he just got scratched by it when he was trying to mess with Isak.  This story ended him up inside and away from the neighborhood kids, yet again.

Today we got a knock on the door by an irritated mother with her 9ish-year-old boy in tow who claims that Isak hit him with a rock yesterday.  At the time Isak was out playing, and we talked to them about it and told them we would deal with Isak appropriately.  As soon as they were gone, B got Isak and I sat down to find out exactly what happened.

Now, I’m not one to think my kids are perfect - far from it.  He knew he was in trouble from the moment he stepped in the house.  The problem was, the stories didn’t just not add up, but I was seething angry by the time the story was done.

It turned out that he did scratch another kid on the hand with a rock (”it was an accident!  He moved his hand when I was throwing the rock away!”) which got him a good scolding and grounding, but the thing is, at the end of the story, he gave a completely different name as to who this happened to.  I told him it was another kid that came over, and at that point he got confused and frustrated and told me the story of how this kid has constantly been bullying him and he was pinned down on the ground and the other kid was attacking his head WITH A ROCK IN HIS HAND and Isak was trying to push him off of him and pushed the other kid’s hand into his face.

I just don’t know what to do at this point.  I told him I don’t want him playing with any of those kids and if they’re anywhere around, to leave and that he is not to play with them.  The problem is, all of the kids in the neighborhood that are his age are playing with these kids.

My biggest regret is that we didn’t call Isak back in to tell her his side of the story and defend himself, because part of me thinks that if he was there, maybe she would have seen that her “angel” is a neighborhood bully that comes over to OUR neighborhood to bully the younger kids around.   Except that I somehow doubt that based on her introduction to us (announcing her rank and command?  for a parent-to-parent issue?  are you kidding me?) and fact that she has never even been on this street before and knows not one child here, that anything would have changed her attitude about it.

So what?  What do I do?  Do I lock Isak in the yard and have to explain to him when he can’t understand why he can’t go play outside like all of the other kids?  Do I hover over the kids and set up a lawnchair in the front yard so I can make sure the big kids are playing nice?  WHAT?