This post is a bit late and I feel behind on EVERYTHING because summer is such good chaos… but better late than never! Here’s my annual open letter to my son for his birthday:

My Marvelous Magical 11 year old,

WOW! How does time just keep speeding up?!

I can’t believe you are eleven years old already. I know, I know, I say that about basically every age every single year, but if you could somehow make time slow down a bit then I could stop saying so! 

While time is still flying, your interests change a lot less these days. You still love stories of adventure and fantastical creatures- whether that be in the books you devour (we can’t get new ones at the library fast enough and that was with your gifted teacher lending you books from her classroom AND trips to the school library each week as well!) or the shows you choose to watch, or the video games you can’t wait to discuss with your friends. 

You have the most interesting questions and see the world in such a unique way. You won the creativity award at school and none of us were surprised between the stories you invent, the way you will set up your room as a “relaxing zone” or a “game extravaganza” or “Hogwarts Jr” from one week to another, or the curiosity about how things work. It feels like you’ve been talking about wanting to improve or invent new things since you could talk!

 

You grew so much this year and hit some huge milestones and events. One of those milestones you were most excited about was your arrow of light crossover from cub scouts into a full Scout. We see your hunger for learning new things there and having adventures as well as taking on leadership opportunities. We also saw you take on new academic challenges and learn to advocate for yourself. You feel things so deeply and took it hard when you found out that you’ll have a new teacher for your gifted program next year, but you immediately worked to channel those feelings into showing that favorite teacher how much you cared about her and would miss her. You are aware of injustices whether they be in your school, in our country, or in the whole big world.  You fit the typical profile of a gifted kid- sometimes agonizing over systemic problems and how you might be able to fix them, and we have tried to model the very hard work of taking the steps you can where you are because little by little adds up. Still, it is hard to watch you transition into recognizing the very big and very sad aspects of the world. But we know that is part of growing up and a lot more of that is coming. I hope you’ll keep asking good questions and challenging us with great conversations around many of these topics.

You still have so much excitement and wonder and it was a JOY to surprise you for this birthday and take you on a trip with your bestie. Us four parents along for the ride thought we might burst seeing how happy you were together and how you listened to each other and took care of each other even in the excitement and overstimulation of a day at the theme park. You kept saying “I am going to remember this FOREVER” and I we hope you do. We love you oh so much and are so lucky to have you as a part of our family.

Bracing for your final year in elementary school and excited to see what you learn, what you teach us, and what excites you next.

Love you always,

Mom