I Hope You’ll Look Closer When You See My Kid

This is my beautifully sensitive kid.
He’s also my extremely anxious kid. Sometimes it’s a paralyzing anxiety.

He’s a kid who struggles with speech.
And with serious hyperactive energy.

He’s only five years old.
And he’s carried these heavy things inside since he was just two.
He’s also been working hard on them for that long.
So he’s a kid who has come a long, long way. A determined kid.

He’s more complex than I expected.
What you see is usually not what you get.
Or, to put it properly, what you see is not what he’s made of.

He’s introspective.
And super smart.
His memory is incredible.

He’s a little bit of a loner, but when he finds his friends, he loves them hard.
His instincts cause him to play too rough, but he’s trying so hard to learn how to hold back.

He’s best friends with his sister.
He looks out for her and misses her when she’s away from him at all.
He’s so very attached to his mama.
And he’s always trying to make his daddy proud.

We love that.

He has so many natural talents.
Screen time and the outdoors are alternately his favorite.
He could spend hours digging little rivers, or designing block robots, or building cushion forts.
His truest joy is his dinosaur obsession.

But you’ll probably never see these things.

If you see him on the playground, you’ll think he’s older than he is. I suspect you’ll think he’s a bit aggressive, and maybe you’ll wonder why he’s sometimes hard to understand.

But I hope you’ll look for more.

Because these kids… the kids who feel or experience so much, so early… they’re just as bright, they’re just as spectacular, and they have just as much potential as any other child. They’re whole, entire humans — beautiful humans, at that. They’ve just had to focus their energy and attention on dealing with things in their little minds and bodies that even a lot of grown-ups can’t quite understand.

And that kind of makes my kid

MY HERO.