Owen gaat naar school

Owen zit nu in de eerste klas (groep 3) en gaat voor het eerst hele dagen naar school (van half negen to kwart voor 3). Dat is vooral lekker voor mij, zelf vindt hij het een beetje lang. Het huiswerk voor de eerste week was een tas met spullen verzamelen die iets over jezelf vertellen. Het huiswerk voor de ouders: een beschrijving van je kind. Dit is wat Dave en ik daarvan gemaakt hebben (mocht je benieuwd zijn naar wat voor kind Owen is):

Marleen:

Aaaaaah...... Owen.....

The light of my life and the bane of my existence. That may be a bit exaggerated, but Owen is truly a boy of extremes. Mr Sunshine or Mr Thundercloud and switching back an forth with staggering speed.

Owen is obstinate, willful, and opinionated. He is also extremely generous, happy, affectionate and friendly. Life might have been easier if he had just the one side to his personality, but that is just not the case. One moment he is straining his brain to figure out what would be the absolute perfect birthday present for you, wanting to make you totally happy. The next he is 'on strike' and he is never listening to you again!

It is hard for Owen to snap out of it, hard for him to forgive and forget. Months (or years) after a perceived slight, he'll bring it up as if it happened 5 minutes ago. A few weeks ago he informed me he was never going back to the gym daycare, because some boy there had punched him a black eye. This is true. But he hasn't been to that daycare in over 3 years, meaning he was 2 or 3 at the time (the boy in question was Nick, who sits next to him in class now, something we should probably not mention to Owen). Also, he still gets mad that he only got to go to Sara's house for an hour and really, that it wasn't a full hour at all (it was, he has no sense of time). This happened last February. My point: if you choose to go head to head with Owen (as I am sure you will need to), be sure it is about something important, because you will have lost his cooperation for the rest of the day, if not longer. He'll be Mr Thundercloud for a good while, because he finds it difficult to just move on.
And speaking about anger, like many guys, all his negative emotions seem to get channeled into anger. Owen doesn't do sad: he's angry. His feelings are hurt: he's angry. He gets frustrated: he's angry. He is unhappy: he is angry. Owen's anger can mask a lot of other emotions, something I personally have made mistakes with in the past, because it is almost instinctive to just get angry back at him. Remind me to tell you about his experiences in preschool at some point.

Owen talks. All Owen's play is based on talking. In his head are elaborate stories, theories and what-ifs and he is driven to communicate these to pretty much everybody, including total strangers, and at sometimes inopportune times. When he plays with his 10 year old brother, he is dictating word for word what his brother should say at this point in the play. This doesn't always please the kids he plays with, obviously, but if their style of play matches Owen's, happy hours of epic battles are fought, lost treasures are found, daunting mysteries are solved and the world is a safer place.
If he joins a simple ball game of some sort, irritation is sure to crop up, because Owen will immediately need to talk about changing the rules of the game to make it better (for him). (Him not being allowed to change the rules does not sit well with him, by the way. So organized sports aren't really his thing.) As you can imagine, with an inner life like this, it is very hard for Owen NOT to talk. I am expecting him to be in your blurt box on a pretty much daily basis.

Sometimes I think Owen truly does not get why anyone would want to do things not his way. He stands so solidly in the world, with such a strong sense of self, that he can not fathom he is not always right. Or that he can get overruled by other authorities. In itself not a bad trait, as long as he becomes self-employed. I can't see him sucking up to the boss.

Owen loves things that are powerful (and maybe a little scary). His favorite animals are sharks, snakes, tarantulas etc. He is very concerned about people hunting sharks and other nice animals.
He does not like to practice anything to get good at it, he just wants to feel competent and powerful instantly (I call it the Spiderman syndrome: get bitten by a radioactive spider and become instantly great! At everything!). So he still can't ride a two wheeler bike or tie his shoelaces. If he can't do it, he doesn't want to do it. Failure makes him angry (for a looooooong time, see above), so choosing his tasks (academically and socially) carefully for maximum success (without it getting boring) will give you a happy kid. He is smart enough to pretty much tackle everything you can throw at him academically, but if you require careful coloring on the other hand, or him patiently waiting for someone to talk to someone else while he is quiet......

Owen will try your patience, but in between, he'll melt your heart.


Dave:

Gotta say, Marleen nailed it. Knocked it out of the park. Owen is everything she said. And still, beyond his often difficult nature, he is the sweetest little boy ever. Ever. He truly does enjoy making other people happy and still, at six, loves to give ‘morning huggies’ and kisses on demand. His big brother never did that, even at three, so Marleen and I are eating it with a spoon.

I think it is important that a young man’s education helps advance his career goals. To that end, please include some sort of Ninja training in the curriculum. As a fall back, he’s also interested in being a scientist who creates potions that cure all diseases and grant everlasting youth. I suggest a classroom emphasis on inorganic chemistry.

Owen is often the victim of what I call ‘Lew Alcindor Syndrome’. Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) was 6’0” at something like 11 years old. It seems people were always complaining to his mother that Lew was immature and needed to act his age. Her response, of course, was that he was doing exactly that and the fault was with those who assumed that one the size of a man should have the demeanor of one. Owen is a big little boy and I’m guilty myself on occasion of expecting him to be something more than he’s ready to be.

Please be patient but please be firm. He hates boundaries but he does need to learn to recognize them and give them at least grudging respect. I promise you that he will make your day brighter even more often than he will send you sprinting for a bottle of wine at quitting time. And who can ask a six year old for more than that?


Julie, zijn juf, stuurde me vanavond een bericht op Facebook:

That truly was the most detailed and accurate description that anyone has ever given of their child. It is amazing how in tune you and Dave are with who he is. I loved the note and laughed out loud through the humor that was laced through it as well. It gave me lots of insight into my little friend. I hope he survives his week of the frog. It may be interpreted by him in future years that Ms. Rosenthal only gave him frog book buddy bags for the entire year, but hopefully he will survive and be happy with next week's animal.


Ik denk dat het wel goed komt met Owen en zijn juf.

P.S. De Book Buddy Bag is de wekelijkse huiswerk tas met 7 boeken en een dagboek om in te schrijven, met allemaal verschillende themas. Owen kreeg vandaag de kikker tas en was daar luidkeels niet blij mee.

P.S. Onze vakantie foto's staan op http://marleenspics.shutterfly.com/ , mocht je daar interesse in hebben