Bouncing Back

"So what are your plans for Thursday night?" my husband casually asked me.
"I don't know.  Why?" I respond.
"Cuz Parker thinks you're going to read to him.  He has 400 pages left in his book and its due next week."
What?!  Like I have six hours to do nothing but sit and read out loud to him when he is perfectly able to read to himself.  Yes, he hates to read.  Yes, it's painstakingly slow for him.  But he's in HIGH SCHOOL now.  And he's known about this all semester.  Mom NOT to the rescue this time.
A couple of "parent-y" lectures, a few daily reminders, and 27 questions later, he had actually read 9 out of 12 chapters on his own, and did as much of the writing assignment as he could over what he had read.
Sometimes I have to push him.
But other times he can be amazingly persistent.
When my brother sent us his old ping-pong table, which happened to be in many pieces by the time it arrived, Parker set out to put it back together.  There were no directions.  Just a bag full of screws, some metal legs, and two large pieces of wood.
Parker laid it all out and started piecing things together.
He found a pic of a completed table on the internet.
He tried a piece here and a screw there.
And just as it looked like it was going up perfectly...it collapsed onto his friend's head (who had wandered over to see what was happening and was promptly put to work helping Tom Sawyer).
Undaunted, Parker laughed...and started over.
I left to have dinner with my sister.
And by the time I got back with Parker's SuperSonic-no pickles-onion rings-and a Rt 44 sweet tea, he was playing ping pong on a perfect ping pong table.

Because this is what he EXCELS at...solving a problem...putting a puzzle together...working with his hands.
And that's why I don't worry.
Life won't always be easy for him.  And he will make mistakes.
There will be hits and misses.
But I know he will always bounce back!