What I've angsting about recently

Because we might as well call a spade a spade. It's not as though this is an actual problem, it's just what I've been ruminating on lately.

The new daycare is going well. The Boy has made friends and plays with a variety of children, from the young to the older, and seems to get along well with them all. He doesn't seem to mind going, he seems happy to be left there and I get positive reports about him from the teachers almost every day. When I go to pick him up, he's eager to leave but before he notices I'm there, he's playing away happily.

Except for one thing: in passing conversation the other day, one of the teachers mentioned that The Boy was having trouble sitting still at circle time. "Oh?" I queried. "He has such a great attention span at home!" (For a three-year-old, anyway)

Upon further investigation is comes to light that he's leaping up to talk about the story, to point out words that the teachers may have missed in paraphrasing or similar. I am perplexed by this knowledge. He never does this at home.

"Oh," says the teacher, "A while back there was some questioning by the older kids whether he could actually read or not, and I think he may have overheard and maybe he's doing that to 'prove' it."

Oh.

Oh.

Well, that would explain a while back when The Boy was looking at something -- some sign or some writing somewhere -- and after he read it out loud looked at his father with some delight and said "Daddy! I can read!" To which we as clued in, in tune (ha ha ha) parents just kind of went .... uh, yeah, of course you can, silly child. Why he's suddenly loving "Super Why", the kids show about reading.

I know that this is something really stupid to get upset about, but all I can see is that this is the very first incidence of what will be many of my child slowly learning that he's different, and that kids think that's strange. And don't believe him. And don't like it. And he's responding by showing off, which is also not a good strategy. And I'm not entirely sure how to fix it.

I'm kind of surprised, on the one hand. The daycare is in a demographic of highly educated folks -- every child there has a parent with a degree, sometimes several. Now this doesn't mean they are necessarily especially intelligent, but it *does* indicate that they value education, and I would have thought that out of 25 kids, one-third of whom are heading to kindergarten this fall, one or two of the children would have had a combination of parents who encouraged and a child who was inclined and would have learned to read. But none of them has. When I asked, she said that some of the children know "most of their letters" and some can "read a few words here and there, but not sentences."

I'm also kind of surprised that this early, it seems to matter. That the older kids, at five, felt threatened enough by a three year old who could do something they couldn't that they felt the need to express to him, to their peers, to their teachers, that they thought he was lying.

I'm even kind of surprised that it matters to him.

The only thing I'm not surprised at is that he's dealt with the situation by showing he really can. It's normal human nature, even if it is unpleasant behaviour. It's something I want to address with him, but while he can perform the behaviour, he probably isn't emotionally aware enough as a three year old to realize why he's doing it, why it makes the other kids uneasy, and how he can approach this problem without being unpleasant. All he's going to learn from this is that the kids don't believe him when he tells them something, that they tell on him, and that the teachers (for completely different reasons) discourage him from proving it. And in the end all that teaches him is that his difference is not something to show, and is therefore something he shouldn't be proud of.

How do you explain to a child this age that you can be proud of something about yourself without rubbing your peers faces in the fact that they can't do what you can? That it's still something to be proud of, and that you should use your skills and talents whenever applicable, but not at the expense of other people's enjoyment?

I do believe that in the end this is a grounding in social behaviour. That in the end this will teach The Boy about relating to others, and this is all crucial knowledge to have. It's something all kids have to deal with on some level or another -- how we relate to our peers and our surrounding environment in a comfortable, rational, pleasant level. How we keep the social courtesies going.

But, OH GOD, how I wish so much that it wasn't this issue, and this early. I just want to sweep in and take him away where no one's disbelief in him can hurt his feelings, where in turn he can't step on the feelings of someone else in his reaction, thus perpetuating the cycle. I believed so much that putting him in a non-academic centre would help buffer this, that when concentration is on something else that his differences, his academic abilities, wouldn't be so apparent and he wouldn't have to deal with other people's reactions for another couple of years, until he was more emotionally ready and able to deal with it.

I know, I know. This smacks of unbelievable hubris on my part. Oh, POOR ME, my kid is bright, and more so than some of his peers. I am reminded of a line from Friends that ended with "My fifties are too big for my wallet, and my diamond shoes are too tight!!" Yeah. I know. Of all the problems to have with your kid ...

Only it's not. Because it's not about him being bright. It's about social interaction, it's about peer rejection, it's about hurt feelings on all sides. Peer rejection and hurt feelings are the same whether it's this issue or any other. It still sucks. Yeah, in the end, he'll be ok. He's not one of these kids who will attend Harvard at 13 -- he's not a super genius, and so his social ostracism won't be that bad.

In the end, it just comes down to the fact that watching your kid struggle in peer relationships still just plain sucks.

** Updated **

I wrote this and decided that I should just ask him. So I asked him how he felt when the other kids said he couldn't read. And he said that he's been feeling "a little bit sad because the other kids say I can't read, but I CAN." So I said something about how it's unusual for three year olds to read, and so the other kids were unsure if it was true. "Three year olds can't read." he replies. "But I CAN!"

We talked a little more and then it was clear he was done. I haven't resolved anything. I haven't made it better.

But I have succeeded in making myself feel more helpless and sad about the whole thing.