First, I thought I’d write about the process of diagnosing Mack.

I was convinced that Mack had ADHD within about 30 seconds of finding my first web page about the disorder. However, it turns out that medical professionals require a little more than a “his Mommy says so” before they will diagnose your child. So at the end of November, we began the process of having Mack evaluated for ADHD. The first step was that I went in, without Mack, to meet with a pediatrician. She asked me a lot of questions, and I told her what I’d observed. At one point I said, “I know kids are usually diagnosed earlier than this, but…” The doctor interjected, “But he’s gifted, right?”

I was impressed that she’d figured that out just from the anecdotes and observations I told her, but it seems that Mack’s case was “textbook” in a lot of ways. The doctor was particularly able to recognize it because, she told me, she has a gifted, ADHD son of her own. We discussed things further and I found, to my embarrassment, that I made use of the box of tissues she’d put at the edge of her desk. I don’t consider myself a big crier. But when she talked about the pain that ADHD kids go through, being criticized and misunderstood, I couldn’t help myself. The good news was that the doctor was sure that we would be able to help Mack.

To diagnose a child with ADHD, medical professionals have specific guidelines for what they need to see. The short version is that they need to know that symptoms started at a young age, that they have continued consistently, and that they are exhibited across multiple environments (home, school, sports). These symptoms also must be shown to be having a negative impact on the child’s life. (So I guess if you’re a kid who can’t sit still, talks all the time, can’t sleep, is losing friends, is unable to finish schoolwork, and fights with people…but it isn’t negatively affecting your life at all…you don’t have ADHD.)

The doctors learn whether these conditions are true by having various adults fill out a form indicating how often they see certain tendencies and behaviors in the child. The form looks for ADHD, and it also screens for other disorders that often come with it – like depression, anxiety and behavioral problems. The questions range from “Does the child often lose things necessary for tasks and activities?” to “Does the child feel useless and inferior?” to the delightful “Is the child physically mean to animals?”

In Mack’s case, we had six adults fill out the assessment. Byron and I each did it, separately, and then we had four of Mack’s teachers fill it out. (I considered sending one to Mack’s abusive football coach from the fall, but thought better of it. Ha ha.)

When I initially asked the teachers to fill out the form, they each pretty much had the same response. It was something along the lines of, “Happy to help…but I don’t think Mack has ADHD.” Then the forms came back and three of the four teachers had answered enough “yeses” to indicate that Mack did actually meet the requirements for ADHD. Even if they liked Mack, and didn’t think he was overly disruptive, they had to answer yes when they read the specific questions.

Well, except for his current Signet teacher. (Signet being the pull-out gifted program for fourth and fifth graders.) She has a watermelon-sized soft spot for Mack. As the pediatrician put it, later, when we were going over the responses. “Well this one just thinks he’s a saint.” Softy.

After all the forms were done, the pediatrician scored them, and Byron and I went in for another meeting. At that time the doctor felt she had enough information to preliminarily diagnose Mack with ADHD. Five of the six diagnostic forms confirmed it. The good news was that none of the forms screened positive for anxiety or depression. That means we had, hopefully, caught the problem before it could really get going on Mack’s psyche. (I wasn’t surprised to see that Mack wasn’t suffering from self-doubt. He recently wrote a poem about the three most awesome things in the world: Christmas, football and Mack.)

Also good news – there were no indications that Mack suffers from any behavioral disorders. I was relieved. I always tell my kids I love them and will always love them no matter what, but I am hoping never to have to explore the outer reaches of that promise as, say, the weeping mother of the defendant in a serial murder trial.

At this point, our pediatrician was ready to see Mack himself. He came in for an appointment and she gave him a thorough evaluation to exclude any physical concerns from being the reason for his issues. Apparently, vision or hearing problems can look a lot like ADHD, as can heart problems. Mack checked out healthy, and the doctor talked with him for a while and then told us that she was making the call to diagnose him with ADHD.

I was…happy? Not happy. But not sad, either. When you see your kid struggling, it is actually a relief to think that it is something that can be fixed. Or, if not fixed, at least managed. So I guess mostly I felt hopeful, that knowing this “officially” about Mack would lead to a better future for him, and for all the people who have to deal with him…because, like Christmas and football, Mack is loud, nerve-wracking and exhausting…but also awesome.

As I’ve discussed before, I have always considered my son Mack to be a difficult kid to parent. But I had no frame of reference, and I sort of just thought he was difficult in ways that all kids are difficult. As he has gotten older, though, I’ve noticed that he isn’t necessarily typical. A lot of the issues I have with Mack are absent in his brothers. Or maybe they crop up occasionally with Aidan and Reid, but happen multiple times a day with Mack.

Mack is not a docile, easy kid to get along with. He is, as one drama teacher once put it, a powerhouse. He tends to make a lot of noise, and have a lot of energy, and try to take over every room he is in. Some teachers and coaches have loved this about Mack, and have looked to him to Bring the Thunder. Others have obviously been put off by Mack’s outsize personality, and have struggled to rein him in and quiet him down.

I’ve spent a lot of years being conflicted about Mack and his relationships with other adults. On the one hand, Mack drives me certifiably insane. There have been days where I honestly felt that I spent 75 percent of my waking moments screaming at him. On the other hand, he is my son. I love him, I think he has a lot of great qualities, and I can’t stand to hear anyone else putting him down. (I think of this as the Mother-in-Law Paradox. Ever notice how you can complain about your mother all day long, but if your spouse so much as says, “Yes, I agree,” your immediate, visceral response is, “How dare you speak that way about my mother?!”)

I’ve also spent years dealing with concerns about how my parenting has helped make Mack the wonder/monster he is. When adults react negatively to Mack, I sense judgment and criticism from them, even when it isn’t there. (Although I’m pretty sure it is usually there.) I’ve spent many years feeling guilty and embarrassed, wondering why I am failing at something which other parents do so well. Why can’t I find the magic strategy that will make Mack more disciplined and respectful? Never mind that I’ve tried rewards, bribery, punishment, threats, tough love, behavior charts, time-outs, 1-2-3 countdowns, and, yes, screaming. People don’t see the effort. If the desired results never come, they think you’re just fine with letting your kid run wild.

For most of his life, Mack managed to do pretty well with his behavior outside the home. With us, he might be running around, slamming doors and arguing and screaming about how he hates us. But he would go to school, or to soccer practice, and do pretty well…or at least well enough to get by.

However, in the last few months that started to change. I first started to notice it with Mack’s football team this fall. After he pestered us approximately every fourteen minutes for five years, Byron and I decided to let Mack play tackle football this year. Mack plays quarterback. He was actually recruited by his flag football coach to play for his team, and was drafted in the first round of the picks.

For the first few weeks of practice, this coach treated Mack like a son (actually, a lot better than the coach treated his own son). He was full of compliments and made it clear that Mack was his quarterback and his Golden Boy. Then things took a turn. The coach started to pick on Mack, and yell at him. He was often inappropriately mean with his criticisms. Then he put another kid in at quarterback, and moved Mack to wide receiver. When we asked the coach what was going on, he had a litany of complaints about Mack. He never seems to listen. He doesn’t make eye contact. He doesn’t follow directions. He fidgets all the time. He seems listless and doesn’t have the “passion” that the other boys have.

Anyone out there already figure out what’s going on with Mack?

At around this same time, Mack started fourth grade. As I wrote in a previous post, Mack has not had an easy relationship with his teacher this year. She sent us e-mails indicating that Mack was having problems in class, with her and with the other students. He was talking too much and not working well in groups, moving around the classroom too much and not paying attention.

Mack’s schoolwork started coming home and it was also cause for concern. We noticed that Mack almost never got 100 percent on his work. I’ve been told by my sister, the gifted education teacher, that we are not supposed to expect perfection from our children. It can be dangerous. But paper after paper was coming home with the silliest mistakes. He would understand the conceptual part of a math problem, figure it out entirely, then make a mistake adding five and two. He would write ten sophisticated, evocative sentences using his vocabulary words, but completely forget to punctuate four of them.

I started to wonder whether Mack just wasn’t that smart. He qualified for the gifted program, and I know that he has good genetics in that area. But I just couldn’t understand how anyone with an above-average brain could make the kinds of dumb mistakes he was making – constantly.

Mack’s teacher allows children to correct all their mistakes and turn papers back in for half credit. Mack and I sat each night and corrected every mistake. After a week or so, I was so frustrated by all the silly errors that I started having him add a sentence below each correction, explaining why he had missed the problem. I soon noticed that the sentence was almost never, “I didn’t understand how to do the problem.” At least 90 percent of the time, the sentence was either “I didn’t pay attention” or “I got distracted during the question.”

Have you caught on yet? If not, don’t worry. I hadn’t, either.

A few weeks ago we received Mack’s first-quarter report card. He got straight As, but a slew of negative marks in behavior. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t follow instructions. He talks too much. He doesn’t have self-control. By this point, I was just at my wit’s end. Mack had always been hard to handle at home, but he had been mostly successful in sports and at school. Now those arenas were starting to fall apart as well. What was going on?

I sat down in front of Google. I don’t even remember exactly what I put in the search box, something like: boy careless mistakes not listening fidgeting. What I got back was a few thousand pages about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). I clicked on the first one and began to read. Within literally 15 seconds, I recognized my son. As I continued to read the list of symptoms and behaviors of the disorder, it was as if I was reading about Mack. It honestly felt like someone had studied his life and then written about it. Tears streamed down my face.

I knew almost nothing about ADHD that evening. I had kind of a vague notion of a five-year-old boy, running around a room in circles, screaming and climbing on the furniture. I’ve learned a lot since then. I’ve learned that while most children with ADHD are diagnosed by age seven, there is an exception to that rule – gifted children. Those children don’t fall behind in school, so their disorder isn’t noticed as easily. It isn’t until around age ten that their problems start to become more obvious, when compared with the maturation of their peers.

I’ve learned that children with ADHD have problems with excessive talking, with fidgeting and with hyperactivity. They make careless mistakes in their schoolwork and lose things a lot. They have nervous tics. They have trouble going to sleep at night and trouble getting up in the morning. Approximately 40 percent of them also have something called Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), which makes them seek out power struggles with adults. Son? Is that you?

Sadly, a lot of older children and teenagers with ADHD also develop emotional issues, especially severe anxiety and depression. It seems that years of being told that you are not listening, not following instructions, not doing well enough in school, not the quarterback anymore…can have an effect on your mental well-being. Imagine that.

We’re currently working with a doctor to see if Mack has ADHD, and any of the concomitant issues and disorders. I believe that he does. It is extremely hard, as a mother, to realize that my son has been struggling with this for his entire life. Now that I see it, it is so huge that I can’t figure out how I ever didn’t see it. I’m just happy we’ve caught it before he started to doubt himself the way I, to my eternal regret, began to doubt him

As happy as I am that we can now start the process of helping him, I will never forgive myself for not figuring this out sooner. So many of the behaviors that have made me so angry for years are things that, well, he really can’t help. I see him in a whole new light, and I’m hoping this will help everyone in our family. Kids with ADHD and ODD are plagued with family issues. Their siblings grow tired of watching one child take up so much of the parents’ attention. The parents fight with the child, and with each other, about how to handle all the conflict and drama. These parents have a high rate of divorce. It just isn’t easy for anyone to deal with a kid like this. But knowing why, finally, is the first step to finding that magic strategy I’ve wanted so desperately.

As the kids get older, obviously, the fun of watching them conquer new things comes less frequently. (When it comes to learning to urinate into the toilet bowl, not around it, it actually seems that none of my boys will ever achieve mastery.) But there is still that jolt every once in a while, when they surprise you by doing something you didn’t know they could do. Today, Reid made his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch, from start to finish. I don’t know which of us was more tickled.

There are certain things that I always knew would be important for me to teach my kids, or have others teach them. It was imperative to me that my kids learn how to swim, and swim well, at an early age. They have all done that, and I love to watch them as they improve and learn new strokes. I wanted my kids to have an appreciation for United States history. Through our conditioning, they’ve all become little history buffs, who nerdily collect and display their National Parks Junior Ranger badges.

I also was adamant, before I ever had kids, that I wanted them to learn a second language while they were still young. On that one, sadly, I totally failed. Turns out it’s pretty hard to do if you, yourself, don’t speak another language.

One thing I was bound and determined to pass to my kids was my love for reading. I am a written-word junkie. I pretty much don’t go anywhere – even from room to room in my house – without a book in tow. I’ve been that way since I was a kid. I took a lot of grief from my peers for reading instead of playing at recess, but I think most of them were impressed by how I could ride my bike home from school while reading at the same time. Like Thomas Jefferson, I cannot live without books; I wanted to make sure I passed this love to my kids. Once I had all male children, I was even more determined, because I’ve known so many men who never read for pleasure.

So I made sure to expose my kids to books from an early age. I hit a hundred yard sales, and bought a thousand children’s books. I read to them, although never as much as I should have. (Evening reading time often dovetailed with “If I spend one more minute dealing with you, I’m going to jump out the bedroom window” time. Reading lost to wine many times.) I also read my own books in front of them, thinking that eventually they would realize, “If Mommy does this all day every day, there must be something to it.”

Frustratingly, however, my oldest son had no interest in books for years. When Mack was in preschool we did flashcards and learned sound blends. He learned to sight read the most common words, but he didn’t care to push it any farther. All through kindergarten, he was disinterested in really learning to put words together. In first grade he had a better teacher, and he began to read well. But he still never, ever, chose it as a leisure activity at home. He showed no interest in books. It made me so sad.

When he was in second grade, we found the key to unlocking the bibliophile within Mack. His class participated in Accelerated Reader (AR), a reading program where each child reads independently, then takes a test every time he finishes a book. They earn points and compete against their classmates. At the end of each quarter, the kids in each grade with the highest point totals were announced over the school loudspeaker, and they won prizes. Aha! Competition – the one thing that could make Mack pick up a book when he didn’t have to. Next thing we knew, Mack was going to the school library every day, sometimes more than once a day. He polished off the contents of the non-fiction shelves and then grudgingly tried some fiction. (Who knew? There was a whole world of books outside those about the greatest NFL quarterbacks in history and the coolest mammals of the sea.)

Funny thing, but the side effect of all that reading was that Mack got better and better at it. His books became increasingly advanced and eventually, without realizing how, he found that he loved to read. Now he reads – by choice – every night before he goes to bed. He’s devoured most of the series that his teacher Aunt Emily has recommended, and occasionally asks me to reserve new books for him at the public library.

His classes don’t do the AR program much anymore, but Mack did recently get the highest AR point total for the whole school, for the first quarter of this year. I asked how that was possible, and he reminded me that he read books one through five in the Harry Potter series this summer. I guess he took all those tests back-to-back, and they amassed a giant point total. Turns out one 800-page Harry Potter book is equal to around 40 little books about the animals of North America.

My second son, Aidan, originally seemed even less curious about reading than Mack. He wouldn’t even really learn the words on those flashcards that I dug out of a drawer, although we made a little headway when I gave him a Hershey’s kiss for every word he memorized. But Aidan was fortunate enough to have a wonderful kindergarten teacher, who gave him all the building blocks he needed to learn to read. And suddenly this summer…out of nowhere…he was reading. It literally seemed to happen overnight. He went from maybe knowing a few short words to reading whole sentences to me.

The first quarter of this school year has been even more remarkable. Every night when we sit down to read, I’m amazed at how he does. He’s gone from reading readiness to chapter books in two months. Aidan has always been a kid who just has to do things at his own pace, and who doesn’t want to be taught. He wants to get there on his own. But I didn’t think he’d be able to do that with reading! I don’t know if I have ever had as much fun, watching one of my kids learn something new, as I have had watching Aidan discover the world of words this fall. It makes me happy every day. And I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve succeeded, at least with the first two boys, in creating book lovers, after all.

Of course, by far the most important aspect of Aidan learning to read is that he is so much better at our Rock Band video game. When he used to sing, he didn’t know the words and he would just kind of scream and hum into the microphone. Now he can read the lyrics and we get such better scores on our performances. Priorities, folks.

But the learning curve in parenting seems to be still heading up, up, up. Even if I figure out how to handle a challenge with one son, the next son comes along and I find that my first solution is completely worthless with that one. You’d think that kids would all be somewhat the same, and that with all boys my kids would be even more similar to each other. But I keep finding, as my kids march through Middle Childhood, that they are each as unique as snowflakes…although not nearly as fluffy and delightful.

For example, I feel like I have given all my boys the same amount of positive encouragement and the same absurd number of compliments every day of their lives. As a mother of sons, I feel it is my sworn duty to make sure all of them are just stuffed full of confidence. That way, no future girlfriend or wife will ever be able convince them that they aren’t perfect. In this way I make sure that my boys will always love Mommy best. (You’re welcome, future girlfriend or wife.)

Yet, despite the equal helpings of “You’re so handsome!” and “Has there ever been a boy as smart/athletic/funny/sweet as you?” my two older sons view themselves vastly differently.

Nine-year-old Mack is, in many ways, an absolute mess. He’s hyper and loud and never works up to his full potential. He fights with his friends constantly and has never met a jacket he couldn’t lose and, sadly, seems to have inherited his physical coordination from me, not his dad. His teacher hates him and one of his football coaches this year actually physically attacked him. He drives people crazy.

But Mack has more self-confidence than any person you have ever met in your life. He enters every room with the assumption that he is the coolest, most fabulous person there. And if you don’t agree with him, he just feels sorry for you for being so sadly mistaken. (Here is where I stop to point out that despite his foibles, Mack is also truly exceptional and wonderful in a myriad of ways, and I’m proud that he is my son, blah blah blah.)

Then there is Aidan, who recently turned seven. All of the things that come hard for Mack come easy for Aidan. He enjoys school and loves his teachers and works hard to please. He’s a natural at every sport he’s ever tried, hears it immediately when he plays a wrong note during piano practice, and loves to make a room neat and tidy. Sure, Aidan is a bit nuts, but he’s so sweet and earnest that people can’t help but forgive him when he acts up.

And Aidan, sweet Aidan, is a teeming mass of insecurity. If I tell him he’s a great reader he replies, “I’m not as good as Lauren.” If I admire a drawing he made, he’ll say, “You should see how Caroline can draw.” Any time he gets a haircut or wears a new shirt for the first time, he frets that the other kids will make fun of him. He seems inherently unable to see how wonderful he as.

How can two boys who have been raised by the same parents see themselves so differently? It’s especially strange considering that they both have so many of the same gifts and do so many of the same things. Why does Mack seem to absorb only the good things he hears about himself, why Aidan seems to block out all but the negative? How can I teach Mack some humility and Aidan some confidence when I don’t know why their outlooks diverged so far to begin with?

I’ll close with the specific anecdote that got me thinking about this topic, just because I think it is funny. As part of an anti-bullying program at school, both Mack and Aidan recently completed a form about tolerance and self respect. The first part of the form listed various behaviors and asked the kids to rank how often they did well at these things (“I am responsible,” “I am a good citizen of my school”). At the end of the form were four blank lines for the kids to fill in an answer to the question, “I also respect myself because…”

Aidan wrote about how he always treats his friends nicely, and he works hard and always does his best.

Mack used the four lines to write three words: “I am awesome.”

We spent a delightful half hour listening to all the things the teacher hates about our son, to the point where I wanted to ask, “Was there ever like…a Wednesday….where maybe he was okay…for like a half hour after lunch or something?” But I was afraid she would say, “No!”

As we were wrapping up, the teacher kind of laughed and said, “Oh, I wanted to mention one thing, to make sure there isn’t a misunderstanding.”

It seems that a few days before the conference, the teacher had been talking with Mack about his not being patient enough with the other kids in class. She was trying to make the point that just because you are a leader, you don’t have to be harsh. You can lead people nicely, and often that even works better.

Mack replied something like, “Right. Because if you are a mean leader you are like Hitler. You make people follow you, but they don’t want to.”

The teacher just wanted to make sure we knew that Mack was the one who brought up Hitler. I think she had a vision of Mack coming home and telling us, “Today my teacher explained to me how I am like Hitler.”

Aidan had a great report, with good grades, a compliment for his progress in reading, and only two points of concern. Apparently he has trouble “Using the appropriate volume for the situation” when speaking. No big deal. I’ve been to lunch in the cafeteria and, in my opinion, every kid in the school needs an X by that one. The report also said he struggles with “Practicing self-discipline.” What? My Aidan? No!

Actually, practicing self-discipline isn’t one of my strong points either. All in all, I thought my little first grader acquitted himself quite well.

Mack’s report card was a bit more problematic. He has been struggling a great deal this year. The academic rigors of fourth grade and of his particular teacher have been challenges for him. In addition, his teacher has seemingly zero patience for the shortcomings of Mack’s strong and admittedly difficult personality. Mack has always struggled to sit and be quiet in class. He likes to talk, does not like to listen, and doesn’t do well in groups unless he is in charge of them. Many of Mack’s past teachers have had issues with Mack’s behavior. But the others have all taken pains to point out that his personality has positives along with negatives, i.e. “I wish he would raise his hand before talking…but when he does talk he always contributes great ideas.”

But his current teacher seems to have missed the day where they explained sugar-coating. She and Mack have been clashing all year and she hasn’t bothered to soften her critiques with any compliments.

Thus I was thrilled to see that Mack earned straight As on his report card – a wonderful surprise as he struggled with difficult math and science units this quarter. But along with all the As were eight different negative marks in non-academic areas like listening, following directions and conduct. (Shockingly, Mack apparently also struggles to “Practice self-discipline.”)

As a mother, this kind of report card is hard to absorb. On the one hand, I love having a smart kid who did so well academically. On the other hand, it is obvious that his teacher thinks he’s destined to be the smartest convict on death row.

The teacher earned some of my afternoon ire because I honestly felt she was too hard on Mack. I mean, I know he can be incredibly frustrating. But it is rare for me to be in the school and not see some student or another being carried down the hall in the throws of a screaming tantrum. Maybe Mack asks too many questions and talks out of turn, but he never throws desks across the room or attacks fellow students. Can’t we grade on a curve here?

But Mack, obviously, earned the majority of my frustration. I sat down with him and said, “What can we do to make this better?” I told him how disappointed I was. His response was that, “Austin got a B in reading!” (“B” pronounced in a tone that makes it sound like “flesh-eating virus.”) I replied that I would far prefer it if Mack had gotten a report card with a B on it, but with positive marks in conduct.

“Why?”

“Because it is good to be smart. But it doesn’t matter how smart you are if you can’t get along with people. Nobody wants to work with someone who is an a-hole all the time. You have to listen and work with people to get anywhere in life.”

He replied, “Buzz Aldrin was an a-hole and he got to go to the moon.”

And you know, I thought that was a good enough response that I let him off the hook on the report card until after dinner.

Aidan got 23 stitches in the face that day, and that was just one of the three times Mack has put his little brother in the ER with broken bones or cuts.

You’d think Mack would carry around some feelings of guilt about repeatedly brutalizing his younger sibling. But…no.

Today, Mack brought home a project he created in the computer lab. It listed different goods and services, and had descriptive sentences about each one. Under goods, he listed ice cream (“I love ice cream! My favorite flavor is cookie dough.”) and football (“I am a great QB. I want to be a football player when I grow up.”) among others.

Under services, he listed stores (“I like to get footballs and jerseys and toys at stores.”) and the hospital. For the hospital, his descriptive sentence was, “When my brother gets hurt we go to the hospital.”

Mack turned nine this month, and was therefore already a bit on the old side for “believing.” (The average age where kids find out is eight.) But he was very tied to the Santa myth, didn’t question it much, and accepted my answers to any questions he did ask me about the jolly old elf.

In fact, Mack seemed far less skeptical than his six-year-old brother, Aidan. Last summer, I said something about Santa and Aidan scoffed and said, “There is no Santa. It’s the parents.” While my jaw dropped in shock, Mack’s head whipped around and he fixed me with a stare, “Is that true?!” Somehow I got out of that one without much comment, but I’ve always had the feeling that Mack would believe for as long as he possibly could, while Aidan probably figured it out in preschool and just humors us.

This year I had considered telling Mack the truth, but I had decided to try to reach for one more year with the magic intact. However, logic intervened. The boys were downstairs playing video games, while Byron and I were upstairs. Suddenly, we hear the basement door slam open, and all the kids come running up into our room. Aidan was holding a big, empty box. It was the box his skateboard had come in. The skateboard that Santa gave him. Crap.

I had asked Byron to hold onto the box, just until we made sure there was nothing wrong with the skateboard and it didn’t have to go back to the store. He put it under a blanket in our back storage area. Apparently, Aidan went back there to get some batteries, got curious, and found the box.

So the three of them are standing in my room, Aidan brandishing the box, and Mack yells, “If Santa is real why do we have this box?” Aidan says, “Because it is Mommy and Daddy.” Reid is just watching and listening.

I replied, “Santa must have left it. He does that sometimes.” Aidan, “Then why was it in the basement under a blanket?” “Your Dad put it down there after Christmas morning.” Aidan cocks his head, and looks at me. I can see that he is deciding whether to accept this and move on, or whether to make this a really tough morning. Suddenly Mack exclaims, “Then why is there a price tag from Dick’s on there? If Santa made it, why does it say Dick’s?” Crap.

I said, “Mack, come here. Little boys, go downstairs.” They did as I said. I pulled Mack into my arms and – I will always remember this – he looked right in my eyes and softly said, “Is it you?” It was like he knew, but he didn’t really want to know. So I told him the truth. I am still not sure it was the right thing to do. But here’s the thing. I have a three year old in the house, who should get several more years of believing. If I don’t tell Mack now (I decided) he’s going to continue to unravel the mystery out loud, and therefore ruin it for his brothers. If he knows the truth, he’ll shut his mouth and his brothers can believe without interference.

At least that’s what I have to believe – that there was a positive reason I had to do this. Because it was hard to tell him.

Mack took the news well. I suppose by the time you are nine, a part of you already knows the truth. (Although the NORAD Santa Tracker goes a long way towards convincing even third graders.) We told him how now he is in on the secret, and has a responsibility to help the younger kids believe for as long as they can. He promised not to say a word to his brothers or cousins. I hugged him and told him I was so sorry to have to tell him, but that it meant he was growing up and I was proud of him.

Even though he took it so well, I questioned my decision all day. I can’t imagine how hard it would be if you had a kid who really struggled with finding out the truth.

Although Mack is ostensibly a “gifted” child, it took him almost seven hours to approach me, as I was folding laundry, and ask, “The Easter Bunny…?” I had to say, “Yeah, buddy, that’s me and Daddy too.” Two hours later, at dinner, he pulled me aside and said, “What about the Tooth Fairy?” I just pressed my lips together and nodded my head sadly. He sighed and said, “So magic isn’t real.”

Anyway, Mack was registered for the 5k race at this school. Mack has run several 5k’s before, but he hadn’t done one in about six months. So we were both a little nervous before the race. He actually told me he had butterflies in his stomach, to which I replied, “Good.”

The race started and off they went down the street. I puttered around, preparing my camera and finding my “cheering spot” on the side of the road. I kept checking my watch, waiting for the first runners to appear back up the course. It’s so annoying, when you are at a race, how bored you get while you stand there waiting for the runners to come along. Must remember to bring doughnuts next time.

I had a time in my head when I expected to see Mack at the two-mile point, so I was surprised to see him chugging up the hill towards me about four minutes ahead of schedule. At first I couldn’t believe it was him, even with the system we have in place – Mack always wears red when he races, so I can pick him out of the crowd from a distance. I just got tired of cheering, “There he is! Go, Mack! Oh, that’s not him. Hold on, there he is. Yay, Mack! Wait, nope.” So now he has Race Red and it cuts down quite a bit on my cheering for the competition.

Mack looked to be in pretty good shape when he came by, but I figured he wouldn’t be able to keep that pace up for the final mile. So imagine my surprise when he came back towards the finish line, still more than three minutes ahead of his personal best. He was chasing down a kid in front of him who had the approximate size and dimensions of someone in his age group (eight and under). I was running along the path to the side, cheering madly, as he passed the kid and then passed a teenager right before the line, finishing in a new best time of 24:07.

I came running up as the race staff member was putting Mack’s participation medal over his head, just in time to hear the man say, with tension in his voice, “Here, move over here.”

I realized that my little thoroughbred was vomiting chocolate Pop-Tart all over the finish line. He kept going until his stomach was empty, as I tried to coerce him to move away from the finish. A school nurse and another volunteer converged on him, checking his eyes, lowering him to the ground and procuring water. Other parents were looking on with concern and asking, “Is he okay?”

Mack was fine within minutes, and very proud of his great new personal record. I was proud of him, too, but I felt badly. Because when I saw him throwing up, my very first thought was how awesome it was that he had pushed himself so hard that he made himself sick with effort. My second thought was, “Gross.” My third thought was that I needed to tell him, for the future, that if he is going to throw up after a race he needs to move away from the finish and find a bush or a trash can.

Fourth was, “Oh, I guess I should be concerned.”

Which probably makes me a bad Mommy. But my kid is a heck of a runner.

I was sorting laundry, waiting for them to finish, when I heard Mack call out, “Mommy, I cut myself. There’s blood.” I walked into the bathroom, assuming it would be something like a nick on the toe, only to find that he had somehow sliced the side of his wrist open. The cut was about an inch long and there was indeed blood – a lot of blood.

I had the reaction I generally have when one of my boys is bleeding. Was it a quick rush to action, with exceptional first aid accompanied by calming words, you ask? No, I panicked and screamed, “Byron! Byron! Help!”

Believe me, I don’t report this because I think it is a charming quirk. I hate how I panic when the boys are hurt; I worry that someday it might hamper my ability to help them when they really need it. But when I see blood on one of the boys, my brain goes all wonky.

This effect is especially pronounced when the injured son is Mack. In his eight short years, Mack has cultivated a certain mystique of invulnerability. He almost never gets sick, even so much as a sniffle. He laughs off cuts and bruises, gets dental work without anesthesia, and has been known to run (and win) two distance races on the same day, with a soccer game and a swim practice sandwiched between.

So when Mack gets hurt, it’s kind of like that part in Superman II, where Superman gives up his powers so he can be with Lois Lane. (Which, can we all just stop to agree – big mistake. She wasn’t into you for your nerdy glasses and knowledge of AP style, Clark.) Anyway, they come down from the Fortress of Solitude and go into that diner. The local bully starts up with Clark and eventually socks him in the nose. When blood actually comes out, we all freak because it is just so shocking and incongruous.

Luckily, last night Byron was just down the hall and came to the rescue. It took about 50 tissues, several pieces of gauze, medical tape, Neosporin, butterfly bandages and sports strips, but he got the bleeding stopped and the wound bandaged. We decided it didn’t even require stitches. (Again, the Mack Mystique. If it had been Aidan, the cut would have been just that little bit deeper and we would have been headed to the ER, no question.)

Once we were both recovered, I asked Mack how he cut himself. Turns out he got himself on something as he reached up to put the soap back in its dish. We couldn’t figure out what it was; it may have just been the plastic edge of my shampoo tube. I told him I was so sorry that such a weird accident happened to him and he replied, “You told me the bathroom is the most dangerous room in the house.”