To My Eldest on His Seventh Birthday

My dear Levi,

Meeting the Mississippi River for the first time at age 6.

This has been an incredible year for you. Together we set goals, some driven by me, some by you, and you achieved them all. You finished elementary school math. You read the entire Bible in exactly one year (and we celebrated with rainbow pancakes at Perkins). You completed Mensa's Excellence in Reading K-3rd grade reading list, plus a host of other classics besides. Over the course of three months in the spring, you made a list of twenty piano pieces you could play from memory at a moment's notice. Then your piano teacher moved away, and you spent the next two weeks transposing The Happy Farmer into every key imaginable, major and minor. You have made individual friends here in Minnesota, something we hadn't quite managed in Ohio, where all of our time with friends was done as as a family. You learned cursive and got your own library card and proved yourself a worthy opponent in both Settlers of Catan and euchre, among other games. You have expressed interest in being examined so that you can take communion with the church body, and you take great delight in being helpful to both your parents and your younger brothers. Just this week, you decided to sit in on our adult Bible study, and while we need to talk about some social cues and how to be deferential to your elders, you held your own in discussing Solomon and 2 Chronicles (which you say is your favorite book of the Bible).  I am so proud of you.

Already engrossed in Bible reading at 2-1/2.

First piano recital at 4-1/2.

Finish the Mensa reading list and get a certificate and t-shirt!

All the same, this has been my hardest year in parenting you. You believe that the world should work in certain ways, and you will not be persuaded otherwise. Sometimes this is a simple and humorous irritation, like when you mispronounce a word and refuse to be corrected. Other times, it is your sin nature rearing its ugly head, turning my earnest and helpful boy into a selfish, demanding child. You are just as likely to share a toy cheerfully as to throw a tantrum over sitting in the "wrong" chair at dinner, and I never know which emotion will surface in any situation. My prayers for you always fall along the same lines: Lord, help him channel his gifts into productive service for Your glory. Soften his heart that he may be open to correction and guidance. Teach him early -- earlier than I learned it -- that it is more important, often, to be kind than to be right. I see my younger self in you, in our desire to have what we want regardless of the consequences, and I react in fear and panic, which only makes you dig your heels in all the more. I forget how young you really are, and my patience runs too short too often. My only saving grace, I think, is our bedtime routine, and I think you understand that, too. You always ask for me, even if Daddy is here to say goodnight. We always go to bed at peace with each other, however hard the day has been.

Second-to-last night of being six.

We sought help and found out that you're "profoundly gifted" just after your fifth birthday. By five and a half, you were accepted into a program designed to help kids like you -- the top .1%, cognitively -- flourish. Long before you turned six, I could speak intelligently about your sensual over-excitability and your vast asynchrony (but I wouldn't talk about it, because how could I tell my friends that my kid was both significantly ahead of, AND behind, his age-peers?). These are struggles that continue to plague us, and perhaps part of the reason this last year has been so difficult. Everything I ask you to do seems to be either too easy or too hard (with some glorious exceptions, like you reading the Dr. Doolittle novels, or Michael Clay Thompson's language arts program). To this day, I see you exiting the bathroom in our own house with your hands over your ears because the toilet is still too loud, and my heart breaks for every time I dragged you into a public restroom and yelled at you to be brave. You converse intelligently and excitedly about the solar system in a room full of adults, and I wince when they laugh -- not at you, but just because the information sounds so absurd coming out of your little mouth. (How tall do you have to be before people take you seriously? Will you ever be that tall?) I watch you standing around with boys three and four years older than you, confident that you are their cognitive equal, but worried all the same that you will launch into a story about one of your imaginary worlds, or have a meltdown over something trivial, or admit that you are afraid of television shows designed for preschoolers, and they won't want to be your friends. I have never experienced anxiety like the sort that attacks me when I take you to social gatherings. This, the experts say, is "giftedness." A soaring IQ that makes life infinitely more complicated for both of us.

It's not so uncommon for a six-year-old to read Charlotte's Web, but you read it cover-to-cover every single day that week. This is one of my very favorite pictures of you.

I know there are people who believe that your accomplishments are my accomplishments, something for me to feel good about, as if any well-meaning parent could teach their five-year-old long division. The truth is, from the moment we caught you at two years old, making words out of the refrigerator magnets, we have been racing to keep up with you. More books. Faster math. Deeper science. More responsibility. More opportunities to lead. More game nights with adults. Last month, you wanted to be a road construction worker when you grow up, so that you can build roads that go up and into the skies. This month, you want to be an astronaut, so that you can take pictures of Jupiter yourself instead of relying on a space probe.

Friday night Game Night with Daddy and me. Your brain is fast enough for word games, but your hands aren't big enough to hold the cards.

So I ask, who's to stop you? You have the capacity to change the world, my son. I don't know why God crafted your brain like he did; nor do I understand why he gave you to me to parent. I don't feel adequate for the job (but then, does any parent?). This past year my desire to protect and nurture you, to provide a safe space for your gifts to blossom, has been overwhelming. Now, as you turn seven, I fear I have protected too much, that it is time to start letting you go (just a beginning!), that you would learn to navigate this tricky world on your own more and more. You haven't figured out that you're different, yet, but I suspect the time is coming soon. And when it does, I want you to know that this, our home, with me and Daddy and your similarly-precocious brothers, is still your safe space. I will not laugh at your questions OR at your answers. I don't mind if you jump from reality to imagination without a moment's pause. I will not take credit for who you are, as I had very little to do with it in the first place. I will challenge you, yes, and I will insist on the self-control that is so hard for both of us to manage, and I will remind you, endlessly, that anything you do--be it something that comes naturally or something you have to work at--you do for the glory of God alone.

And for as long as you let me, I will tuck you in at night, and remind you that I love you, in all your beautiful quirkiness, but that God loves you more. I pray that there never comes a day when you cease to nod and answer, "yeah, I know." It's a good truth to lean on.

Happy birthday, Levi.

Note: I'm not sure when I will share this with Levi, but it will likely be several years if not longer. Please do not discuss my blog or its contents with him. Much of what I have revealed to you here, he needs to discover for himself, in his own time. I am recording our current state-of-affairs for posterity's sake, and to someday be able to tell him what he was like as a child.