Clare's Dad

I’ve seen Clare in a whole new way in the past week.

Clare’s Mom went to the school year’s first Home and School Association meeting last week and open house at Clare’s school.  Our fears that Clare is spiraling behind and will never make anything out of her life because she doesn’t like homework have been relieved.  It turns out that nobody likes homework.  Who knew?  Clare isn’t the only kid adjusting to second grade.  Thanks also to those of you who left comments telling me that your kids aren’t perfect little homework-doing machines either.  It’s nice to get a reality check on things like that.

The struggles to finish homework are continuing—especially with spelling—but it’s not as bad as the first couple of weeks of school.  And the work is paying off.  Clare just brought home a 100+ on a spelling test.  The “plus” was for spelling the bonus word, Mississippi.  Ironically, she can’t spell Connecticut.

There’s something else that Clare’s teacher said that really struck me though.  Clare, she said, is a daydreamer and everybody likes her.  These things didn’t surprise me about Clare at all, but for the first time I thought, “We’ve got a daydream believer and a homecoming queen.”  We’re raising Miss Congeniality.

Clare, like all kids, is growing and continually developing a personality.  Sure babies and toddlers have personalities, but it’s maybe not until first or second grade that parents really see beyond the cuteness in all of them and start to envision the type of teenager and adult that their kids will be.  It’s almost kind of sad to picture her grown.  She’s tall, smart, stylish, friendly, caring, and I can totally see “daydream believer” and “miss congeniality” in her for years to come.

I think about the other kids in Clare’s class too—kids we’ve known for two years now—and I see it happening to all of them.  I hate classifying kids or any people into types, but it’s inevitable.  I can see who some of them will be.  The brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, the criminal.  Okay, with any luck there won’t be a criminal.  And the basket case probably takes longer to develop.  But we’ve got the princess covered.  How about you?  Were you a “type”?  I was a brain and borderline nerd, but I think I grew out of it—I didn’t like science or math.  If there’s such a thing as an arts nerd that was me.  And how about your kids?  Can you picture yours grown too?