Reading to My Boy

Currently I am reading Little House on the Prairie to John (and Mary, but she just flits around the room, wandering over only when the page has a picture).

John is a four-year-old boy.

He is my first four-year-old boy, so I don't know what they're like in general, but I suspect they're pretty active. When I am reading, John is doing gymnastics next to me on the sofa. He does many hand stands. Every so often I check in with him to see if "we're done" of if he'd like me to keep reading. He asks me to keep reading and says he is listening.

It is very hard for him to sit still.

I know he can do it because he can muster all his focus and get through a 60- or even 90-minute Mass. But it's hard! I sure do wonder how many boys are diagnosed with some label (not saying they're all false labels) and put on some program or medication simply because they're healthy boys and not more mature, sit-still kind of girls in a totally female-oriented institutional school setting.

Sometimes before prayers at home (e.g., 10-minute rosary after dinner) I send John to "get the jumpies out." Then he'll do something like more than 100 jumps on the trampoline followed by 30 laps running around the den. Or he'll run around the house ten times.

If only we could bottle and sell that energy . . .