Tribute to my biggest ‘little man’

It’s strange the thoughts that come to you when you’re washing up, or just about to fall asleep.  This is one of them.

Tribute to my biggest ‘little man’.

He turned 13 last week … that milestone of life that marks the beginning of the end of childhood.

And I got to thinking.  It doesn’t seem like 13 years.  It barely feels like five minutes.  But so much has happened to and around him.

It was an easy, if nauseous, pregnancy that ended with a long and difficult labour.  So much so, that after trying to blast him out with ‘liquid dynamite’, they decided that a sunroof may be required.  Eventually they ended up pulling him out by his ears, and his very first baby photo, taken in the hospital, has him looking rather like an angry beetroot.

When we brought him home a few days later, I still remember that feeling of awe and fear as we sat staring at him in his Moses basket in the living room.  ‘What now?’

Then several weeks of silly grins and ‘look what we did!’

Then life changed.  His dad became disabled in a way that would affect us all far more than we realised.

My eldest son has never known his father able bodied.  He’s never had that joy of being able to run around the park with him.  Even the basics of childhood – walks in the woods, yomps over the dunes, kickabouts in the garden, all those things that were planned and dreamed of in the nine months he was forming in me, have been curtailed.

He was a precocious child ... rolling, sitting, walking all well before the average (and that’s not proud mummy exaggeration – I have the film to prove it).  By 4 years old he was exploring and understanding processes like the precipitation cycle, how a combustion engine works etc.  He could hold a proper conversation with an adult.

But he also ended up growing before his time in many other, not so fortunate, ways … unintentionally becoming a carer himself … for his dad, and later on, and to my eternal regret, in part for his brothers.

He also had his education interrupted.  He missed pre-school entirely, and ended up in three different schools before he was 11.  All because of having to move to follow accommodation that worked for his dad. 

So whilst he is immensely intelligent in practical and ‘thinking’ ways, whilst his knowledge and maturity often surpasses his peers, his ability to put that knowledge into the accepted forms, his basics, his ‘three Rs’, are sadly behind.  Despite this though, he keeps trying, keeps putting in the effort, and whilst he will never be an academic ‘A’ student, he is on track to pass all subjects.

His father and I also unwittingly gave him the dodgy genes that resulted in hypermobility syndrome, dyspraxia, and other issues, so along with sports, that apparent social ‘fix all’ to so many, being difficult, he’s already had more than his fair share of bumps, bruises, sprains and growing pains.

And yet, through all this, he’s never truly complained.  In fact, he’s often had to be stopped from taking more on.

Yes, he has struggled at times … most often because unfortunately he takes after me in that he doesn’t make friends easily so, with his other issues, has been a target for bullying … but thankfully he’s never bent to peer pressure.  He knows WHO he is, and won’t let that go.  And now we won’t have to move again, and his dad’s issues are no longer a decisive factor in our daily lives, he’s starting to make bonds with like-minded kids that I hope will support him and see him through many years. 

And he is GOOD.  One of the recurring themes of any parent teacher meeting, or encounter with a Scout leader or some other adult he’s dealt with, is that he is polite, helpful, willing to try, even if he doesn’t always succeed.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told they wish they had more of him in their class/group.

So, as I look at him now, in his army combats, plugged into a computer game, with his unwashed neck and smelly feet, the beginnings of fuzz on his chin, and an attitude that would rival the most hormonal teen male, I feel PRIDE. 

Because while that may be how he looks and acts, it’s not all he is … in fact it’s very little of what he is … and if all goes well, he will be far more than a collection of labels and assumptions and grades when he grows to maturity.

But even if he’s not … he’s still my son ... my 'little man'.