Where am I exactly? I’m 30 minutes from meeting Simon at the bus-stop (he now rides the bus home a few times a week, and my hips, budget, and mood are all improved as a result), and for the first time in all his years of schooling, I don’t think Simon is going to be happy to see me. No, scratch that, I’m sure of it. And that kind of breaks my heart, but there’s nothing I can do.

Fact is, my precious boy, the one his teachers universally adore, got caught lying about brushing his teeth for the second time this morning. The first time we busted him, we explained the importance of tooth-brushing and honesty. To drive home the point of the importance of good oral hygiene, I showed him a picture of Shane MacGowan. (If you are unfamiliar with Mr. MacGown, Google him. But not while eating.) “That ought to do it,” I said to myself, and the matter was closed.

Then this morning I asked Simon if he had brushed his teeth before he headed out the door. He told me yes, but I was suspicious because I didn’t recall hearing the water run. The dry tooth brush confirmed my suspicions, and thus Simon’s last interaction with me before heading off to school was my yelling at him for lying and telling him that his computer, on which he watches soccer videos, was going away for today and tomorrow.

He shook and cried from what I suspect is a combination of shame, fear, and anger. I’ve hardly ever had to yell at him before, and he’s certainly never had a privilege revoked. I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize that computer time was a privilege. As I watched him walk down our hill towards the bus stop, I was saddened by his downward gaze and shuffling, agonizingly slow, gait.

This was a miserable, anxious, and sad 9-year-old. And while one part of me, the responsible parent part of me, thinks, “Good, maybe he’ll remember how awful he feels the next time he’s tempted to lie,” the mom who’s had a ridiculously easy run of 9 years is sad that I’m no longer a source of exclusively good feelings.

I recognize that most of my cohort has had to drop the hammer well before now and that it was unrealistic to expect Simon to remain my perfectly obedient child forever. But it sure was fun! Much funner than this next stage promises to be.

In 20 minutes, I will meet a nervous and long-faced child at the bus-stop, at which point I will restate the importance of honestly and ask him whether, in the event that I go upstairs and sort through the bathroom trash, I will find a week’s worth of discarded flossers. (Spoiler alert: I won’t.) Regardless of how he answers me, he’s going back to the dentist ahead of schedule. But one answer will restore computer privileges tomorrow night, and the other will extend the ban through Sunday.

Wish us both luck.

Our lives are often sorted, measured, or arranged by age groups. Market researchers, educators, marathon organizers, and camps all create somewhat arbitrary age groups by which they order and divide people from one another.

I just changed groups myself: Were I to enter a race, I’d now be in the 45-49 category. In fact, now would be a great time to get back into longer distances, as I’d probably do OK in my age group. Last year, however, it would have been harder. Those 41-42-year-olds who are still running marathons are fierce, disciplined, and can beat the pants off of many. Whereas I might be able to outlast a few nearly 50-year-olds if I really put my mind to it.

Unfortunately, Simon is at a distinct disadvantage these days in the age divide. Most soccer camps and programs have a clean break at 10, with the 10-and-ups playing together in one group and the under-10s in another. As a boy of 8 years and 10 months, being with under 10s should be fine. And if the under 10s are girls, it IS fine. But with boys? Unless they are a pretty select group, it’s not fine. Which puts me in my least favorite position: that of the parent insisting that her special snowflake requires special treatment.

Last summer, Simon had only a so-so time at the hyped and expensive University of Louisville soccer camp. The reason for this was that he was with other 7-year-olds, only one of which was as good or better than he was and several of whom weren’t that serious and/or were discipline problems. I should have insisted they bump him up.

This year, at Shakespeare Camp (about which more later), Simon was in with 18 7-to-10-year-olds. He liked the girls just fine. He found 1 or 2 of the older boys to be tolerable. The rest he complained about and avoided like the plague.

And today, at a Louisville City F.C. weekend soccer clinic, we showed up and learned the kids would be divided along familiar lines: 6-9-year-olds on one field, 10 and up on the other. His school friend Jacob was with him; his soccer friend Aidan was in the 10 and up group. We hoped for the best, but the report when we picked him up was as follows:

“I didn’t really like this camp. None of the kids except Jacob are very good. And a lot of the boys were mean. I’d put a little shoulder into them, and they’d get mad at me and be really mean. Or I’d score, and they’d say I was cheating. But I wasn’t cheating!”

After he told me this, I went and found one of the coaches, Illija Ilic, a 22-year-old Serbian player on The Louisville City team. Did he see any of this? No, he didn’t, but he was sorry it happened and he missed it. I explained that I know Simon doesn’t play rough, but maybe some of the boys aren’t used to any contact at all? Maybe he could explain that a lean was OK?

“No, that’s not it. They’re probably just mad because Simon is by far the best player in this group. He’d probably do better over there [gestures to the 10-and-up field].”

“Great,” I said, “Then let’s put him there tomorrow. He’d be thrilled to be with his friend Aidan anyway. Here’s the thing about Simon: He played U-10 ball when he was still 7. He’d rather be the youngest, least experienced player with the older boys than be the best, most experienced player with kids mostly younger than him. He likes the big pond and doesn’t mind being a little fish in it.”

So tomorrow Simon will join kids at least one year older than him, and I can guarantee that he’ll have a better time sports-wise and socially. But for it to happen, I’m going to have to be THAT MOM again the morning, the one explaining that her special snowflake can’t possibly be lumped with his peers.

Then next week Simon will begin the annual challenge of finding one boy in his class to be friends with. He’s solid with the girls: he’ll be in with Brooklyn, Aerin, and Bella, who are three of his best friends from school. But of the 37 boys in his cohort, he’s only found seven that he really gets on well with, and one of them moved to Washington state a year ago and the other six are in different classes than he is. I only need one, and there are some new boys I am optimistic about, but I can’t shake the feeling that if Simon were going into 4^th grade this might be easier for him.

It’s hard to be a serious, introverted, competitive almost 9-year-old, and I don’t see the situation improving any time soon.

I have most acutely felt this within the PTA this past year. As the Vice President of Programming, my job is to be in charge of all non-fundraising programming. I’m a chief! Or I would be, if most of the Indians didn’t fancy themselves chiefs, too.

Our communications chair has great ideas about how to harness social media for the group and was quickly recruited to help the school roll out a new website. What didn’t so much happen were the flyers about fundraisers, the PTA introduction packet, or any newsletters. That was farmed out, half-assed, and/or skipped. The one “newsletter” that was produced lead with a call for volunteers to take over the newsletter. You know, some Indians to follow the communication chief’s vision.

I probably should have taken over this one, but I didn’t.

Then there was the PTA directory. Lots of opinions about that one, too, including how it should be formatted, how to use advertising to make it a revenue provider, etc. I even had volunteers sign up for this one! Except then they didn’t reply to email. So who did the whole thing? Me, of course.

Then there is merchandise. We had a real visionary on this front–someone who provided a necessary re-brand for the entire run of merchandise.  She then asked for 4 volunteers to manage stock and sell the stuff, not understanding that her role included taking care of those mundane details. But wait! The cavalry arrived in the form of two school parents who run small businesses. They had just the solution, including managing stock and sales through inventory software. They even showed up one day to take inventory, then were never seen again and quit answering emails or returning phone calls.

Don’t we have volunteers for that kind of grunt work? Yes we do. In all likelihood, me in about two weeks.

I was super fortunate to find one volunteer to take over the staff appreciation lunch, which is typically held the last week before school lets out for the winter holidays. “Awesome!” I thought to myself. Except then it turned out that the only day out of five that person wasn’t available was the only day the school was able to host the event.

So who organized the whole thing? Me. To be fair, though, one of the school’s teachers split the heavy-lifting with me. She’s not afraid to be an Indian!

On the Sudanese front, things have been increasingly lop-sided for some time. We’ve had all kinds of life changes on our board, including births, deaths, impending moves, and the onset of chronic illnesses. All are true and valid. But the end result is that I am now the person planning the meetings, running the meetings, taking minutes at the meetings, and doing all the work to allocate scholarships. I have one hard-working Indian left, but her forte is fund-raising, and we don’t need that any more.

But! When it came time to write our closing letter to donors, the board was pretty adamant that they needed to review my letter and suggest alternative charities to recommend to our present donors. I begged this not be so, as Thanksgiving was just around the corner and I knew I’d be facing many other end-of-year deadlines. They didn’t relent, and I didn’t pull the chief card and over-rule them.

I should have. Because what happened?  Uh huh, no one replied to my email, and I ended up doing the whole thing on my own anyway—only on a much more compressed deadline.

And so it goes, much as it ever has. All the leadership guidelines about “delegating” in the world don’t help if you delegees aren’t willing or able to be delegated to. My own goal for 2015 is to be a little more chief, and a little less Indian. Wish me luck!

Here’s what the Hunger Walk sounded like back then:

“Mama, I think I need to take a short break. Did you bring the honeysuckles? [honeystingers energy chews]”

“Come on buddy, we’re almost there. You can do this!”

“Let’s try to pick it up just a little bit, OK?”

And here’s what it looked like:

We finished in 43 minutes, and he was pooped. But he was only six and he made it 3.1 miles! I was so proud of him I could have burst.

This year we only got out to run once or twice. He wasn’t that into it, and he was busy with soccer,  tennis, and swimming. I signed him up for the Hunger Walk again this September because I wanted the company and the fundraising support. I also persuaded his soccer coach to do the run with us.

Here’s what the Hunger Walk sounded like last month:

“Simon! Simon! Slow down buddy. You’re going out too fast and are going to bonk.”

“I got this Mama.”

“No Simon, trust me. If you go out too fast you feel really bad after a mile or two. You need to let yourself warm up.”

“I’ll be OK, Mama.”

[me to water station volunteer]”Hi, Excuse me? Have you seen a young boy, not quite 8, pretty skinny in a blue shirt run by here?”

“You mean number 109? He flew by!”

“OK, great. That’s my son, and I lost track of him.”

“Well, his legs are younger than yours. It’s OK.”

And here’s what it looked like:

We’re on the far right. I’m in the blue top and grey and white skirt, and Simon is in front of me to my right. Soon he would be further in front of me. By mile 1 he would turn the corner ahead of me, and I would next see him at the finish line.

Yes, that’s right. Within the space of a single year I went from slowing down to run with Simon to not being able to keep up with him. He ended up finishing in 28:18, and that includes time wasted slowing down (briefly) at my insistence and looking over his shoulder to see where I was. In his own words, it was kind of freaky crossing the finish line because he didn’t see anyone he knew there.

His time put him in 3rd place among children under 10 in the race, and it lit a fire under him. He wanted to run another 5K as soon as possible, and this time he wanted to win something. So we signed up for the Highlands Cup 5K, a much hillier course that runs through my neighborhood and the park adjacent to it. As 5Ks go, it’s a challenging race.

I told him all of that, explained that many of the youth runners will have had cross-country experience, coaching on running form, more practice, etc., but he was having none of what I was selling. He wanted to run fast and get a medal, and nothing I could say would change that.

Here’s what his 5K sounded like this past Saturday:

“My legs started to hurt at about mile 2.5, but I wanted a medal so I pushed through.”

“This grown-up told me to follow him for pace, but I wanted to run faster than he did so I said no thanks and ran past him.”

And here’s what it looked like:

That’s Simon charging up a hill to the finish line. It also looked like this:

That’s Simon holding his 3rd place trophy. He finished in 24:54 and placed 3rd in the Men’s Division age 9 and under category. He also won a gift certificate to the local running store in the raffle at the after-race pancake breakfast. By 9:30 a.m. he was already sure that this was the best day of his entire life.

By dinner he could hardly move, as dropping three contiguous 8-minute miles with no training, coaching, or proper stretching tends to leave one stiff and sore. Today he had to skip part of soccer and we rescheduled tennis for Tuesday.

The pain has done little to diminish his enthusiasm. He’s got plans. He wants to run more races this fall. He wants to run the Hunger Walk in 23 minutes next year. And in two years he wants to win one of these suckers.

I’m not about to tell him he can’t!

“Simon, you’re my best friend!” Griffen happily declared.

“You are in my top 3,” Simon replied, which I suspect was not the desired answer.

Just a few days later, towards the beginning of a sleep-over, I overheard Simon say the following to his friend Rhys:

“You are my second-best friend.”

How touching! I cringed and could not understand why my normally sweet and empathetic child was being so tone deaf. Then it occurred to me: This all derives from Simon’s obsessive need to order, quantify, and rank things. It’s never enough for a team to be “great” or “one of the best in the world” for Simon. He has to know absolutely where they rank.

The same goes for tall people, where we’ve discussed the tallest in his school, our city, and the world. Or speed, where we’ve had to learn which car has gone the fastest and how fast that is. Ditto tallest building, shortest person, longest-lived animal, fastest animal, points and goal differential for major soccer teams, and any other thing you can think of that has—or could have—a number attached to it.

The great beauty of this brain is that Simon has a natural and fluent facility with numbers. He’s about 1/2 way through memorizing his multiplication tables, can handle negative and positive numbers, and enjoys learning about squares, square roots, and factorials. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be a major math geek, and I mean that in a good way.

The not-so-beautiful thing about this brain is that he can get hung up on details to the point of annoyance (mine) and exhaustion (mine again), and that sometimes it can make him less than sensitive to his friends. Thus his compulsion to rank his friends. Thus my little chat with him about how you don’t always have to be strictly honest with people if doing so will hurt their feelings.*

I coached him about how say things like “You’re one of my best friends” or “I have a few best friends, and you are one of them” if he’s asked. Along the same lines, we’ve also discussed how to answer questions about school-work, where things are getting stickier by the day. Some of the higher-achieving kids are getting pretty competitive with each other about things like reading levels and number of math facts memorized. Meanwhile, some of the other kids have begun making comments to Simon about his grades, math skills, or general academic ability.

Here, my strategy is to get Simon to deflect and re-direct. I don’t want him spitting out his scores and rankings on various tests or online programs. I’d rather he learn to give a non-answer and then either praise the high-achieving kid for his or her own progress or encourage the less-high-achieving that he or she will get there in their own time.

Talk about verbal jujitsu! I really do know that this is too much to expect of a child Simon’s age. But if we don’t practice, he’ll never get there, and I do not want an obnoxious, braggart of a son. Nor do I want a son who is academically advanced but socially deficient. And honestly, I’d rather not have a child who is hung up on the wrong kind of numbers in the first place, because it can inhibit trying new things and only tells a small part of anyone’s story.

That last bit is going to be a tough sell for Simon. How can numbers not hold ultimate truth? So until we can have meaningful discussions about things like motivation, test bias, and un-quantifiable attributes, I’m sticking with dodging the question and lying when necessary.

These days, I’m especially fond of little Raja and Kalli (names changed). Raja is a spitfire who I suspect causes the occasional problem in class. She’s smart and feisty and has taken a liking to me, though not always for the right reasons. Last year, just before spring break, I gave a lesson to her kindergarten class. Mr. Sowder was out for the day, and in his place was a very pretty African American woman who wore a traditional west African head-wrap and was, in the parlance of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Club series, of traditional build.

This matters because at the end of my day, as I was packing up and the kids were getting lined up for buses, Raja could no longer contain herself. She broke out of line, ran to where I was sitting, and blurted out:

“I wish my mom were skinny like you, but instead she’s as big as my dad!”

This was accompanied by hand gestures to demonstrate exactly how large her mom and dad both were. I was a little mortified and a lot amused. Here’s what I said:

“I think you are trying to compliment me, Raja, and I appreciate that very much. But it’s important to remember that people come in all shapes and sizes, they can all be beautiful, and that you have a terrific mother.”

The traditionally built substitute teacher could barely contain her laughter, then told me that she thought I handled the comment well. For the record, I think what Raja was really trying to communicate was that she identified with me. She’s darker than I am, but we both have heavy-lidded eyes and dark hair, and she has the same small frame that I do. Unless she has aunts or cousins in town that are built like her, I’m closer to her in that regard than her family is. Honestly, she reminds me of my niece Olivia more than a little.

But that’s not why I like her. That’s just why she got my attention. I like her for the exact behavior that got her clip moved down on the behavior chart a few weeks back. She’s in Simon’s book-club on Thursdays, and Simon and Apurv (the group’s co-leaders) are having a heck of a time getting the rest of the group to focus. One day, the week before I started volunteering, Simon reported that book club was a mess. Elijah was flicking pencils and not paying attention, and Raja and Jack were fighting the whole time. In fact, Jack interrupted Raja every time she tried to say something, and Raja got so frustrated with him that she started hitting him with her book. Jack got moved down one space on the behavior chart; Raja two.

Frankly, I’m on Raja’s side on this one, and she’s now an absolute favorite. She and Simon are due to have a tennis and lunch date soon, and I can’t wait to hear what she has to say in a smaller group.

Then there is Kalli. Kalli wasn’t in Simon’s kindergarten class last year, so I’m just getting to know her, but she’s already made my day once. Kalli is in the same reading group as Addison and Maggie. Together, the three girls are the class’s top readers, and when I’m with them I enjoy seeing how far I can push them in their analysis of text.

For our first meeting, we discussed the story of Persephone. They could re-tell the story beautifully, so I focused our time on discussing why such a story was written. That discussion was a stretch for them, but I sensed they were close. So for our next meeting, we read a slightly dry piece on myths—what they are and why they were written. The article ended with a brief discussion of the Theogony, which was way over their first-grade heads, and a description of creation myths.

I sensed that the best way to explain what they read was to discuss creation stories they might be more familiar with. I asked if anyone could tell me a story about how the word was created. As I suspected, Maggie (who Simon adores and calls “a version of Caroline”) jumped right in with the account of creation from Genesis. Excellent! “See,” I told her, “the ancient Greeks had stories that explained how the world was created just like we do now. Every culture has a story like this. Does anyone else know a story about the word being created?”

At this, Kalli got very excited and began jumping up and down in her seat. I was happily anticipating that she would tell us a Hindu creation story.

“My Dad and I watched a video about this one day,” she exclaimed.

Excellent! Her account will have visuals from Hindu mythology. How awesome will that be? She continued:

“These rocks smashed into each other. And the one rock broke into lots and lots of tiny pieces. But then, because of gravity, the tiny pieces started to come together. [This is all accompanied by fantastic hand gestures.] At first it was a lumpy and not round at all. But after a while, because of gravity and all the swirling, the rocks became round!”

In case the story and hand gestures weren’t enough to be adorable, there is also the fact that the entire story was told with a lilting Indian accent. My cousins sounded like their Chicago-born mother when they were little,  so I know this accent will fade away before long. But in the meantime, it added to the over-all adorable effect.

“So tell me girls. Does that sound like a story or like science?”

They were split on this question, too. I have no idea what Ms. Thomas has planned for them next, but I do know it’s sure to end up giving me cause to smile.

When I was in elementary school, I was a good student. By middle school, I was a very good student. And by the time high school rolled around, I was often tops in my class. I tried to be low-key about it, as the only person I was really competing with was myself. Which is to say, I didn’t care if 10 others in my class aced the same class or test I did, so long as I did well. Still, word got out. Which resulted in many, many late nights caused by the twin circumstances of my own heavy homework load and the near constant phone ringing of friends calling for help.*

Simon’s work load is, as one would expect for a first-grader, pretty light. And yet, the pattern has begun. He told me that when his class breaks up into math workshops, his friend Katie is the one who remembers the teacher’s instructions and reminds Simon of what they are supposed to be doing. Then Simon sits down and does all the computation for the group.That’s more of a Matt story than a Jessica one. I would have remembered the instructions. **

But the next one? All me. Friday is math catch-up day. The students grab their unfinished assignments from the week and take time to complete them and put them in the finished assignment basket. Except Simon has always already completed his math. (Or at least he thinks he has. I suspect he’s not explaining his reasoning as he’s supposed to, as he’s already explained to me that word problems are stupid. “Just give me the numbers! I don’t need a story about them!”)

Anyway, during math catch-up time those who do not have catching up to do are to choose a math reader and continue working. Simon grabbed a math reader today, sat down to his desk to plug away at it, and immediately came up against distractions from three sides. One friend wanted to goof off with him. One friend wanted Simon to read math problems for him/her. And a third friend wanted Simon to solve math problems for him/her. Simon’s actual complaint was, “With M– not taking it seriously and everyone else always asking me for help, I couldn’t concentrate on my own work!”

Boy do I feel his pain on that one. And though the stakes are currently low, this is a problem I plan to nip in the bud straight away. I told him next Friday to shush his friends and tell them that since it wasn’t group work time, he needed to be quiet and focus on his own reader. And if/when they continue to ask, I’ll then write his teacher and find out how she wants him to respond. But they key is that he has to be the one to tell his friends to back down or ask his teacher for help doing the same. Otherwise he’ll never learn to say no (I had problems with this), and he’ll be up ’til midnight doing other people’s homework in eleventh grade, too.

*This problem completely disappeared in college for three compelling reasons: (1) at a large state university, it was harder for word to get out; (2) my college was attended by LOTS of really great students (yay bigger pond!); and (3) the few times fellow students asked to borrow my notes, they were faced with handwriting so bad that a professional epigrapher would struggle with it. Heck, I could barely read it!

**One day, Katie will have a fine career ahead of her as a technical project manager. Simon can then be the hapless programmer/engineer who can’t remember what day it is but crunches numbers or produces code like mad. Seriously, I’ve been watching this dynamic at Wells Fargo for over 12 years now!

I’ve seen this before, of course, but this time I wasn’t worried or anxious over the tears. Because while the cure for perfectionism and anxiety is elusive and slow coming, the cure to Monday morning blues is accessible and quick: You just get on with it. And I was pretty sure that Monday-itis is what I was dealing with, as Simon has had no notable issues with school for weeks now.

Plus, Matt and I were feeling a touch of post-vacation letdown ourselves. Having blown the first week to smithereens with our own flu shot procrastination, we packed as much into the second week as time and weather would allow. After a week of family fun, who in the world is excited about setting an alarm clock and feeling rushed once more? Not us. Nor Simon.

The sobs abated by the time we were heading down our street to the bus-stop on the corner. He was moist but stoic when we greeted the McMahon girls. And when the bus arrived, he gave me a quick hug and kiss and ran to the bus in a way he did not when it was school-related anxiety making him miserable. He just got on with it, and by the end of the day he was fine. When I picked him up in the school gym, he was all smiles and talk of the entire class staying on green for the day.

This morning we witnessed a return of Monday-itis in a milder form. I suppose I could call it post-weekend letdown. It is thankfully milder than post-vacation letdown, expressing itself in quiet tears rather than heaving sobs. I tried out a little talk therapy as we headed down our street, talking about feeling the same way, explaining that the dread is always much worse than the reality, and suggesting that he picture all the things he likes about school. Then I confessed to feeling the same way and hugged him out of solidarity.

I’m not sure how helpful that was, but he once again gave me a big kiss and bounded towards the bus once it came into view. He’s getting on with it. And if he can keep his post-vacation or post-weekend let-down from intruding into the actual weekend or vacation, he’ll be ahead of his mother and Uncle Steve in such matters.