Eugenious

Sylvan's high school senior portrait

Dear Sylvan,

Today, Elena and I waited in your classroom while you finished up your cinnamon toast and fruit snack. You washed your hands and gravitated toward the touch table, filled with cornmeal and black beans (mmm, tamales). Ready for resistance, I reminded you that we were on our way out the door. “Okay,” you said. No problema.

We headed into the lobby, because Elena wanted some milk. You settled into building and stacking with the wooden tree house, keeping yourself fully occupied. When she was done having milk and wanted to play, you grabbed wooden discs from her, snarling, “No! I’m playing with that.”

I loaded you and Elena into the double jogger, with a little coaxing necessary for the toddler one of you. We crossed the street right behind a 5-year-old girl. You leaned out and said, “That’s Julia.” You and Julia smiled at each other, and Julia told me a story about a skunk and a raisin (not really, but it was a 5-year-old’s story; it could have been about a skunk and a raisin).

We reached University Park, and Elena practically stopped the jogger by sheer force of will: slide, slide, slide, slide, slide, slide. “If I think it enough, I will make it happen.” You hopped out of the jogger and walked directly toward the 9-year-old girl building teepees with sticks in the sand, trying to avoid her own little sisters. As I tried to make sure your daredevil sister didn’t tumble off the slide, I occasionally watched your interactions with the girl. You talked, she talked, she built, you watched, you knocked down her structures with a stick, she clapped, you talked some more. When I approached you once, you said, “I don’t want you here.” She told me, when you came over to slide, that you reminded her of a much older boy she knows and that you’re sweet.

At home, you played in the sandbox for 30 or so minutes on your own before coming in to make your sister cry.

All this is to say that you’ve become a complex and interesting little man, not easily distilled into a few words, but I’ll try anyway.

• You offer little resistance to suggestions that make sense or that are routine: leaving school, leaving the playground in 5 minutes, getting into the jogger.
• If you’re building or digging with items that interest you and with which you feel competent, you’re content to be on your own for 30-60 minutes at a time.
• You don’t like to share with Elena, especially when you’re playing with a toy first, despite the fact that the roles are reversed quite often, and you become insistent that the 1-year-old should share with you (Let me tell you something about role modeling, Sylvan…).
• You enjoy the company of girls quite a bit. I have seen you play with boys, and you seem to play best with boys a little older than you, boys who don’t threaten to act like little brothers, swiping your stuff or dumping sand on you. You worship those well-behaved boys , at least a little, making Star Wars ships that look exactly like Robbie’s, for instance. But I’ve seen your eyes light up when you talk about girl friends at school (and Camilla’s in a whole other category, really, one that makes you jump up and down).

Sometimes, you still say funny things: “We’re going to Mars. If we smell a bad smell, it might be Martians.”

I love you, even if I can only get a kiss by telling you I don’t want one,
Mommy

This kid is so delighted. Can you tell?