ohbloodyhell8

Our youngest son loves zombies and mummies and creatures of all sorts.  I’m not sure why he developed an interest in creatures.  I do enjoy the monsters from literature and simply Halloween and ghoulies in general so perhaps he got it from me.  I think I know when his love of the macabre began-the year he would only wear a jack o’ lantern shirt.  Trust me, I look forward to the years of deep discussion and dissection of Uncle Stevie’s books with my youngest son.

Tonight we reviewed the report card.  He did very well. The one area that needs some effort is writing.  But wait…I manage a writing lab, how could this be?   He is my second child and communication has always been more physical for him since his brother is “Verbal” Kint.  Our youngest usually managed to get a word in edgewise by whaling his brother at the opportune moment.  We’ve broken both of their habits.  The oldest has come to realize that his baby brother can, in fact, speak and express his desires, needs, and thoughts.  Our youngest now knows to say excuse me, although more often than not, he simply screams his bother’s, oops, I mean, brother’s name to get his attention.  Baby steps, remember.

So how do I inspire my physical, kinesthetic child to write?  I started by asking him how he feels about writing.  Doesn’t like it.  Why not?  I don’t get enough time.  What do you do with the time you have?  I have to think about what to write and by the time I think of something, time’s up.

We’re creating a “writing ideas” folder for him to bring to school.  Pictures of stuff he likes, places he thinks are interesting, and a list of things to write about to help him come up with ideas.  We talked about how he can write his list of ideas any way he wants to because he can always rearrange the ideas later.  I also told him I know he does his best and that’s what he needs to do.

Then I asked him if he knows how smart he is.  His brother is smart.  There’s no other way to say it, the kid is bright.  I took out some library books today to learn about evolutionary theology to help him as he moves toward accepting Jesus as his savior and getting baptized.  He needs to reconcile the fact that, and I quote, “When Adam would have been made doesn’t line up chronologically with the arrival of the first Homo sapiens.”  That is a big shadow to stand in every day of your life.  So I asked our youngest how smart he is.  He wasn’t sure.

I’ll tell you, this kid is smart too.  He is so mechanically inclined it blows my mind away.  He can design things in his mind and execute them exactly the same way.  He doesn’t need to sketch it out-it’s simply there.  He ponders and comes out with declarations that you don’t expect from a six-year-old and his street smarts are equal to his book smarts.  He watches and observes his older brother and learns from him.  He needs to see this about himself.

I decided to connect this conversation about his “smarts” to his love of zombies.  My hubby likes to chase after them for their “BRAINS”.  I told our youngest he has brains he hasn’t even used yet.  I told him zombies would love his brains.  He smiled from one ear to the other.  Tonight, he spent 30 minutes reading before bed.  He seems very excited about the writing ideas folder.  Ah, zombies inspiring great writing.

What brains do you have that you haven’t used yet?