Small boy is 9

It’s time to look back again and wonder, baffled, how small boy has arrived at another birthday. It was the same when he was 8, when he was 7, when he was 6 and the year before that. The years seems to be flying past, it feels like no time since he was the baby who would only sleep wrapped in a fleecy blanket in my arms.

Thriving

Well he’s been in year four at school this year and he’s been florishing, really secure and confident with his friends and his teacher.

His reading is frankly ridiculous at this stage. His reading age has stalled at 12 years old, but I wonder if that’s something to do with how they measure it. He loves fact books and will happily spend a hours just browsing information. He’s recently finished The Moondial, but mainly loves really silly stories and adventures with monsters.

More important than his academic strengths, marvellous as they are, his strong friendships remain steady and largely without disruption. He’s got a little group, somewhat dynamic, of a few core friends and about the same number of other kids who join in sometimes. He’s definitely got some best mates which is lovely to see. With his two best mates, they’ve started to have sleepovers and one of them has joined the rugby team. The three of them are very tight, but not to the exclusion of everyone else.

On his residential this year, he showed that same care and support. One of the children in his room was hurting others; pushing them off the top bunk, kicking, forcing them into the wall. The teachers couldn’t be in there all the time and this particular child has ADHD but get special treatment with few consequences. Small boy came home with legs covered in bruises from being shoved into things, but his friends fared worse. He was so sympathetic and calming to his upset friends, that one of their mum’s messaged to thank him (and us) for his kindness. School have handled the situation but we are beyond proud with small boy looking after people at such a time.

Challenges

Last year, the hardest thing small boy had to deal with are his migraines. We still haven’t figured out the triggers as he only has 2-4 a year. He knows how to deal with them and recognises the first signs immediately, often in the afternoon so school sends him straight home. But they seem to have been less severe in the last 8 or 10 months. He hasn’t been sick in ages and his last one he didn’t recognise as a migraine at first because the pain wasn’t so bad.

Sadly, as the migraines abated last autumn, he started to experience night terrors instead. He would wake up 90 minutes after going to sleep quaking with fear, his heart racing, sweaty and talking nonsense. He was still asleep but walking and talking and had his eyes open. In the morning he’d remember nothing. After several months of the disrupting mounting, he was waking every night. Thankfully, the doctor’s advice proved a quick fix – stirring him gently an hour and a quarter after going to sleep interrupted his sleep cycle just enough that the terror wouldn’t happen. After just a few days, they stopped and he’s barely looked back. If they start again, we’ll all know how to help.

He challenges himself too. Last summer, he went on zip wires and climbed massive climbing walls. Something that he tried the summer before and wasn’t ready for. But, in the last year he’s conquered his fear and loved it. He’s been away on Cub camp, sleeping in a tent with his two friends despite worrying that he might have a night terror, and the same for his residential. He refuses to learn the bus stop method of long division, but I know that he’ll master it in his own time. We’ve started to let him out to ride up and down our road on his bike. It’s quite quiet and straight, but a little bit of freedom is well-deserved and we know we can trust him.

Growing up a bit

Small boy will continue to be referred to here as small boy. While, we still use his own little language to say we love each other, “maow haow mum”, he’s definitely not a little boy anymore.

He can ride through forests on muddy tracks on his fancy geared bike, he can walk miles around a race track and stay up until midnight trying to watch 24 hours of motor racing, make his own breakfast, and answer back in such a way he’s hard to argue with. He can plank and do more push ups than anyone else in this house. He likes grenadine syrup and chicken kievs, but loves cheese beyond anything. He has this brilliant face he pulls that’s so grown up, I suspect he’s mirroring me, that indicates “really?” with strong sarcasm. If I express surprise at his knowledge, he shrugs a practically gallic shrug as if to say “but of course, everyone knows that mum”. He loves lying on the new kitchen floor making silly shapes or running around dancing to terrible drum and bass tunes.

His favourite thing is climbing rocky hills, from Arthur’s Seat to White Nancy or just a few rocks at Lyme Park or an outcrop on the beach in St Malo. Wherever we go, he’s spotting hills he’d like to climb. He’s impatient to go back to Lake Garda so he can scramble on the rocks of Monte Baldo and meet its resident mountain goats – his kindred spirits. He’s most definitely an outside boy, constantly muddy-kneed and scraped-elbowed. He marvels in the bugs and plants and the views from high places. He loves to sit and just be with nature, he’ll stop on a walk and just watch swallows swooping over a pond catching bugs.

He’s shown determination and dedication this year too. After being dragged along to rugby when he was 5 and not really taking to it, he returned in autumn 2021 and remained unimpressed. Then one disgusting, muddy, wet, cold day in 2022 something clicked for him. Then, in September 2023, he started contact rugby, and loved it! He’s taken to tackling, perhaps with not quite so much vigour as some of his team mates. But he isn’t afraid to tackle or be tackled. More, he uses his voice and organises his team, he’s often takes on the scrum half role and does a great job of moving the ball. He respects and encourages his team mates, soothes them when they’re upset or hurt. When we played a team who were a player short, he not only volunteered immediately but he scored a try for them, lead their half time talk, and celebrated with them at the end. His coaches were so impressed that they award him the TREDS (teamwork, respect, enjoyment, discipline, sportsmanship) award at the end of the season.

He loves old Top Gear and new The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm and lasagne, BMWs and fried egg sandwiches, Lego and, broccoli and scrambling up rocks, Minecraft, his patchwork quilt and Uno, his brother and pulling silly faces. He hates marmite and being interrupted, getting too hot, being made to do his spellings and wearing pyjama tops, cutting his hair short and having his photo taken. He loves cheese, all cheese, any cheese and especially just cheese.

His relationship with his brother has been a hard road to navigate this year. Large boy is very independent now, especially with moving to secondary school. They are together less, argue more, and small boy is old enough to explain his frustrations. Managing a fair and balanced justice system in this house is becoming tricky. But, they still have shared activities. They watch rugby together and in recent months, they’ve been playing Minecraft and ancient Wii games together. Now that small boy is 9, they’ll be playing Fornite together which will either be wonderful or world war III.

I’ve got to agree with him, he really is not a little boy anymore. He’s self-assured and friendly, supportive and loving, passionate and absolutely ridiculously mischievous. But he does still sleep with his favourite organutan teddy and often the same blue blanket too.

… and now he’s nine

So happy birthday to our funny, bright, caring, gentle, open-hearted, addicted to cheese, independent, short haircut-hating, tight-hugging, lasagne addicted, surprising young man.