Nine!

Dear Carter,

As I sit here starting to type this letter, I'm in the waiting room on your last night of appointments at the behavioral health office.  I just read last year's birthday letter and it became even more apparent what a crazy, whirlwind year it has been.  A year ago we were just gearing up to get you into these appointments.  We were exhausted from a year of remote schooling and the resulting screen time overload and were at a loss on how to get you out of so many bad habits.  We were in the process of getting you evaluated and approved to see a therapist, and everything felt so hard.

A year later, so much has changed!  Last year's letter was one with barely a glimmer of hope, and this year, the sky's the limit!  We had a perfect storm that got you into that mess, and we had a perfect storm that got you back out.  Medicine helped, no doubt.  From the moment you started taking it last June, it was like you finally had a bit of quiet in your brain and realized there was more to the world than a screen.  You got better at playing with toys, you made it through a low-key round of summer school, and took all of that momentum (plus your new upgraded, long-acting medicine) into the start of the school year and absolutely rocked it.  You got a good teacher that was a perfect fit, you had your best buddy in your class, and everything just seemed to fall into place.  And suddenly, our fun kid was back and school was better than ever!  

We recently got your latest academic evaluation from school, one that was done at the beginning of the year and repeated a few weeks ago.  We found out at your fall open house that almost everyone was lagging behind their grade level, which was no surprise after the hell that was pandemic schooling for a year and a third.  With this evaluation, you were on grade level for everything!  Only 30-some percent of the school is on grade level, and you're one of them!  You have made such strides in your reading, to the point you're showing as "late third grade" right now in that program.  However, you're doing so well that you even got the special chance to read a book at school that's rated for kids a couple years older than you!  You're so proud now of getting your math homework done, which was once an epic challenge even with our constant oversight.  You're so excited about your teacher and the things you get to do at school, to the point you're the one asking me each day, "So what do you want to know about my day?"  I feel bad I don't always have a unique question to ask back beyond what special you had or what fun things you did, but I know I should be thrilled you are still willing to share since tween- and teen-hood usually ends that phase pretty solidly.  All of it is such an amazing turnaround from where you were a year ago.  

On the home front, we still have our challenges but everything is so much better.  You still much prefer a screen to anything else and I feel like we shouldn't have to push you so hard to play in the toy store that is our living room, but your attitude is so much better and I'm back to getting countless hugs and "thank yous" that had all but disappeared a year ago.  You and your brother have chilled out a bit--when you do play together there's almost always a minor injury or major injustice, but it seems like most of the battles-for-the-sake-of-battling have dissipated unless Jacob is in "a mood", so as a whole we're living a much more peaceful existence.  Not perfect, but slowly but surely better.  You're just much more cooperative and way less argumentative, and it's been a godsend.  

We really bonded over our playground sessions last year when the weather was nice, and I know you can't wait to restart that.  Our snow fun a couple weekends ago gave us a little taste of it again, and I know I need to be better about finding things like that for times when the playground isn't an option.  You thrive off that time (even if it's paired with an errand that you still don't love), and you deserve it more than just when the weather is nice!  I can't wait for more adventures with you, from these little playground trips to much bigger ones, especially when you finally hit a growth spurt and can ride every roller coaster there is!  I hate that some adventures we might have had have been put on hold by the pandemic (Disney, for one), but I think this time forced us to get creative and started us on a series of adventures we wouldn't have had otherwise, so I'm grateful for that.

As much as I would love to take credit for this turnaround and pretend it's just great parenting, I can't.  Yes, we had to be your advocate to get you on people's radar and get you some help.  But circumstances finally bent our way and all of them worked together to make it better.  School went back in session, which fixed some of the screen time issues and minimized the time you had for conflict at home.  Medicine helped school get easier to manage, and which probably enabled a great start with your teacher, which made school even better.  All of that made your day-to-day life much less agonizing, and we've all benefited from a happier kid.  You've worked so hard at school, and now you graduated all of your therapy, too!  We couldn't be any prouder of how far you've come.  

I still hope that we can fully bust through this screen addiction, because there is so much creativity buried in there that needs those non-digital outlets to emerge.  Now that we know you can read and we've seen that you can talk about something other than your games, the bar has been raised.  You're smart and capable and we want to see all of the amazing things you can do.  We need to help you with this next stage of maturity, and I hope we finally get a break from this pandemic so we can work up the energy to see it through.

Still, I can't believe you're nine!  My once-little baby is really getting to be a big kid.  I didn't think the tween years would get here so quickly, and I know from experience now that adolescence will be here before we know it and I am definitely not ready for that.  I'm still adjusting to one teenager, so I'm glad we have four years before there are two!  But this is almost too close for comfort!  Your babyhood really seems like a lifetime away now, though I'm happy we've gotten a glimpse back to the happy-go-lucky little boy you were up until a couple years ago.  You were so happy for so long, and then your default emotion became annoyance for a while, which was so hard to see.  But now that happiness is back, even if we do need to deal with the tween moodiness at times.  

I just can't get over how this year finally turned things around in such a big way, and I'm so thankful for it.  You saved me as a parent for so long when Jacob was endlessly difficult, and then it got to a point where he was almost the easy one--but he hadn't actually gotten much easier; you just got significantly harder.  But now things feel so much more manageable and functional, and while I know medicine and circumstances were huge pieces of that, I know you have worked hard to get back to the sweet kid you once were.  There is so much to celebrate this year in particular, and I can't wait to do just that.  We love you so much and are so proud of how far you've come.  Happy 9th Birthday, Carter!

Love,
Mom