My Twice Baked Potato

When my son was young, he realized the power of words.

Early on in his love-everything-art stage, he used to label the items in his drawings.  He sat at his child size table and filled notebooks with creative stories.

Sometimes, he didn’t use his power for good.

I remember getting a phone call from my son’s preschool teacher after the parents of one of his classmates contacted her.

My son, frustrated with his friend for playing with someone else, had written several notes about this boy. They were filled with four-year old potty words and then put in sealed envelopes.

Funny thing about said notes, we delivered them to the preschool teacher and asked her to make sure that the boy got them.

Needless to say, we never gave letters to anyone else that we didn’t read first.

The bad thing, or good depending on how you look at it, was that his spelling and writing was so accurate that the boy’s older sister could easily read all the letters even though the boy himself could not.

Yes, words have power.

My TBP continued to write imaginative stories that mostly took place in MineCraft.  The writing and detailed drawings continued until school became too exhausting.

No longer was he writing about topics that he selected and his work was measured by his correct formation of letters.

“I hate writing. I won’t write anymore.”

Not long after the writing stopped, the drawings stopped too.

“That’s not what I do anymore.”

These words were repeated throughout third grade. I hoped that writing and drawing would return when we started homeschooling.

It didn’t, not right away.

First, his reading for enjoyment slowly returned.  Now, it isn’t unusual to see him enjoying a Fablehaven series book in his bed or the car.

He was momentarily curious about writing when he saw that I got a check in the mail from a magazine article that I had written.

“Do you mean that you get paid when you write?”

I replied, “This time I did, but sometimes it’s just for fun.”

You could almost hear his mind working like the insides of a cuckoo clock; however, he didn’t say anything and the writing didn’t resume.

The change happened this weekend.

My family accompanied me on a trip to a local writer’s convention. My son knew what I was doing, but didn’t fully understand the why.

After our return Sunday, I was casually talking about one of the workshops and the speaker that I responded to. I didn’t realize that he was listening.

“Do you mean that he wrote the stories that he wanted to read?”

“He gets paid to put his stories on Amazon and people buy them?”

“That man was homeschooled like me?”

These questions and my answers, sparked interest in my little writer for the first time in a long time.

Since our return, my son has asked daily to get on the computer and write.

He smiles and reads and reviews and then returns.

I am thrilled to see this and hope that he feels the value and enjoyment in writing for a long time.