When The Eldest was born, he had this thing where he wouldn’t sleep if he wasn’t in someone’s arms, or alternatively, we had this thing where we didn’t know how to put down a baby, but in any event, there was a period of several weeks where Not A Lot Got Done due to a combination of zero energy and zero free hands.
At the time, we had cable, so TV was Consumed. We didn’t have a fancy-pants digital media setup at that time, just cable, so the TV that was Consumed was whatever the network was throwing at us, which wasn’t always (or often) of our choosing. Especially during the daytime.
Yep, daytime TV. And plenty of it.
And that’s the excessive preamble that I promise will eventually tie back to The Eldest, but mostly it tries to explain why I was watching Ellen one day.
On this particular episode of Ellen, which is the only one I remember, which doesn’t mean that I didn’t watch any others, or that the others were forgettable, but I will concede that many episodes may have congealed in my mind into one massive talk show that lasted 39 hours, and (pay attention!) on this episode, there was a guy playing ping pong. There was a girl playing too; she was from China and really young and really good, but the guy is who stuck in my memory because he was on some kind of American Ping Pong Team, and he said something that made An Impression.
He’d been playing ping pong since he was two years old.
As I write this, The Eldest is three, so I guess he won’t be on Ellen for ping pong, but what struck me on that day was that this guy’s parents must have recognized some kind of aptitude/interest and did everything they could to foster it. Or, maybe it was one of those things where his grandfather was a champion ping ponger, his father the same, and he had better learn to like it. But I prefer the former.
And ever since, I’ve paid close attention to The Eldest’s activities (and now The Youngest’s as well) to see if any patterns are emerging that could be Aggressively Fostered.
And that day has come.
My eldest boy has what it takes to be a competitive Easter egg finder.
Easter was months ago, but he still has his basket of plastic eggs that he demands we hide around the house. And he’s really good it it too. I mean, sure, we’re not burying the eggs in the yard or anything, but I’d hazard a guess that he’s finding them at a four year old’s level, at least.
Hiding the eggs is another story, unfortunately. He has this habit of talking about where he puts them, and when it’s my turn to find them it’s more of a tour where he takes me to each location. And there was that one time where I was sitting on the couch with my eyes closed and he hid an egg on my lap. Which, to be fair, is the last place I would have looked, but his talking gave it away.
I don’t know about any venues for a competitive Easter Egg hunter, but my job is a parent is to make his dreams become reality with a minimum of tedious research, so my path is clear: in addition to helping him with his training, I need to start lobbying the International Olympic Committee to make this thing into a recognized, medal-winning sport (failing that I guess I can go to the Nobel people.)
The trick will be to have a hand in defining the rules so that competition-grade eggs happen to be the same plastic shells he’s already using, because then he’ll have the edge of experience and I won’t have to buy more crap, and I’ll also need to ensure that “finding” is in a totally separate category than “hiding.” Because let’s be honest, most of my job is observing and helping aptitudes develop, but that also means setting things up so he can play to his strengths and not his weaknesses (though he’s welcome to prove me wrong.)