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A Reluctant Child
By Maria T. Olia
"You are such a loser," my oldest son tells his brother. "I told you to stay at first base."
My youngest son chimes in, "Yeah, everybody knows you can't run on a fly until after the ball is caught."
My 11-year-old middle son, Kian, is in tears. "The whole team was yelling at me. Everybody stop yelling at me. Mom, make them stop yelling at me!"
In the rough and tumble world of boy's play, Kian is definitely "not in the game." My oldest and youngest sons can wile away whole afternoons playing Wiffle ball or tossing a football in the backyard, and they know that all they have to do is peg the ball a few times at Kian before he'll quit and walk away.
Kian walks away a lot. Over the years, I've been concerned enough to spy on him during recess at school. While the other kids are playing off the wall or dodge ball in the schoolyard, Kian is digging with sticks, playing with nobody and doing nothing at all.
As he has grown, it has become obvious even to me that Kian is different. He notices subtleties that my other kids don't – the "dancing" of the sunlight across the kitchen table on a winter morning, the scent of freshly laundered sheets, a repositioned picture in the living room.
Then there's that nurturing quality about him. Kian patiently taught his 6-year-old sister how to ride her bike. He's a champion catcher and caregiver of small creatures – bugs and butterflies, frogs and turtles. And he isn't afraid to express his feelings. At bedtime he tells my husband and me, "Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Dad. I love you both." And as I shut the door to his room, I wonder, "Why do we stereotype boys, especially our school-age sons?" Emotional closeness really is a wonderful trait.