Wednesday, October 20, 2010

As my son cruises through puberty and becomes a man, I find myself challenged to keep up with his many personalities.

Some days, he is my sweet-faced little boy who comes up with great ideas for fun things for us to do. A couple of weeks ago, he chided me for slacking on leisure reading.
"You need to read more," he said. "When was the last time you read a book?"
I couldn't remember. So he came up with a plan where each night that he is with me, we read from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. He even offered to help me find a book. He was adamant about it, in a role-reversal kind of way. I appreciated his concern and was up for the weekly reading assignment though concerned about my ability to stay awake long enough to read one chapter. (First night, I made it 20 minutes; this week I made it four chapters!)

Last night, I told him it was 8 p.m. and we should start our reading.

"Mom, we're not doing that," he said, as if it was the stupidist idea he'd ever heard.

Suddenly, sweet-faced boy was gone and replaced with pimply surly teenager. And the next chapter begins ...

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