Three Plus Two

Seventh Grade Plans: Shield of Faith

Since I do everything backwards, I posted about a day at our house and our first week before I posted anything about the kids' plans.  I probably should have done it the other way around.  But like I said -- backwards.

Anyway, I am at long last getting around to posting Gareth's seventh grade plans.  I finally learned how to save screen shots, so I'm going to put up some copies of our plans saved in.jpeg format.  You ought to be able to click on the image and see it larger.  I did not do the original work on building the tables, however.  The tables come from the Sunflower Basket at Serendipity.  Jen was kind enough to send me editable files of the tables so I could use them to plan for Gareth, and also to tweak for Katydid (since I was making pretty heavy tweaks for her.)  All I did to make them into "boy" tables was to change the yellow to blue and add a knight graphic.  (And then my son said, "Why is there a knight on here?" And I said, "Because, you know -- Shield of Faith..." and then he looked at me with that look your kids get when they're sure you're slightly addled but they're humoring you.)

Before I start in on the plans, I should tell you a few things.  First, they are not designed to be generic.  They're designed specifically for Gareth, according to the interests he listed for me a month or so ago.  (The list: "How to throw a spear/prehistoric people/evolutionary biology/military strategy/communications badge/archery/fishing.")  I firmly believe that one of the best things about homeschooling is that it allows for quirky, individualized educations.  So, if you can use something I've put together, then by all means feel free to use it.  But if this all looks ridiculous to you, or like it would never work with your child... that's okay.  Your family and your child just need their own quirky education.  Quirky is good.

When Jen told me she was using the Catholic Girl's Guide for her daughter back some months ago, I immediately wondered if there was a Catholic Boy's Guide.  Turns out there is, only it's called The Young Man's Guide.  It's organized according to St. Paul's "armor of God".  Since we'd already planned to start medieval history this year, I thought such a guide would tie in well.  I thought it might also be good to emphasize chivalry at this age.  Then Gareth threw me for a loop with "prehistoric people". 

But I decided that a study of prehistory and evolutionary biology would go well with the first chapter of The Young Man's Guide, which is "The Shield of Faith."  Not because we believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis and a young earth (we don't), but because after reading through many of the resources I thought would be good for Gareth to use, I became frustrated with the two polarized positions inherent in most of the literature.  Apparently religion and science are "in a war", in which scientists must "fight back" against Creationists (and vice versa).  What has really happened it seems is that "evolution" has completely lost its status as a scientific theory and become either a religion or an anti-religion, depending on which "side" of the "war" you're on.  In the literature, evolutionists seem to be unable to mention God and so jump through lots of hoops which involve personifying the Earth and physical processes, as if they "sense" and "control" things, and of course anti-evolutionists must also try really hard disprove anything that seems to have taken a long time to form. 

Thankfully, the Catholic Church has a different position on the matter, which brings the theory of evolution back into its role as a theory, affirms God as the creator of everything no matter what mechanisms scientists discover (or think they discover) at work in nature, and does not require the faithful to deny evidence which would seem to indicate that the universe has been around for a long time.  (In fact the Big Bang theory of the universe was developed by a Catholic priest.)  In this way, Faith and Reason are not at war with each other, and this is something I want to emphasize to my kids -- that there is such a thing as the Unity of Truth.  But when you read any book that talks about evolution... ugh.  You need a strong faith, because almost everything I could find was written from an atheistic viewpoint, in which evolution is either "random" or guided by some unidentified superorganism called mostly "Nature" or "Earth". 

Fortunately, thanks to an enlightening old thread on 4real, I found Mary Daly's Creator and Creation.  This book includes Pope John Paul's Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on evolution. 

It's probably better suited to an older teen, but I've mentioned before that Gareth is "twice exceptional", and science is often where we run into that kind of asynchronous development.

Ok, so without further adieu... the actual plans.  You'll notice they're pretty full, and that I did not always include page numbers.  That's because I wanted Gareth to have some freedom of choice and I was not always sure which books would appeal to him most.  So I listed some I wasn't sure about and made it clear to him which ones those were.  These plans are also designed with our seasons in mind.  Until mid October, we will be able to get outside... and should, as much as possible.  Because after mid October we can get snowstorms.

  

Notes: This is Gareth's daily work, more or less.  We've made a few tweaks.  Logic is an experiment.  I wasn't going to include it this year because Gareth really needs to work intensively on writing and spelling.  But I do want him to be able to read critically for argument, especially in some of the selections regarding evolution.  Traditional Logic says it's for "as early as 7th grade", but once I got the book, I got the feeling that maybe the authors thought it might be better left until high school in the majority of cases.  The book was backordered, so it took a while to come, and Gareth just got started on it last week.  I'm not sure he liked it much, but I want him to complete at least a week or two of lessons before we decide whether to delay it or not.  (He is going to have to do it sometime.) 

 

Notes: This is the first year I have actually assigned Gareth any reading.  To be honest, the only reason I'm assigning reading this year is that Gareth's taste in fiction tends to be narrow.  Using the Kolbe Junior High Literature guide, I chose two books I thought would have a high level of interest for him, to kind of ease into this assigned reading thing.  All summer long I told him how I was going to assign him really boring books... you know, like Fellowship of the Ring.  And he would laugh.  So fast forward to now, two weeks into us being back to school.  He's been spending most of his time doing literature.  He gulped out of the Silent Planet in a matter of days before we even officially started, which sort of wrecked the plans to use the Kolbe guide to structure his reading and writing.  Oh well.  I'd rather him be excited about the books than just doing the bare minimum every week.  He's working on a book report for Out of the Silent Planet now and reading steadily through Fellowship of the Ring.  He did request the other two books in CS Lewis' Space trilogy and so we may scrap other parts of the plans so he can read through those.

Notes: Since I was just writing this for our use, I didn't always include on the chart details like author's names or (unfortunately) the whole titles of magazines.  I'm actually still waiting for those back issues to be delivered, actually, and will be trying to get in touch with the Cricket Publishing group again this week.   Five Boys in a Cave is a book I read when I was a kid and enjoyed.  It's a classic adventure story about five boys who get lost in a cave which turns out to have cave paintings like the ones at Altamira and Lascaux.  So it's not actually history, but it is a good read.

  Notes: Gareth tends to have intense interests, and, like I said before, sometimes narrow reading tastes.  He also has a tendency to be "bored".  Anything that falls outside whatever his interests are at that time is likely to earn the label "boring".  Unfortunately religious reading has always earned that label.  We do many religious read alouds as a family, go through the Baltimore Catechism as a family, read the Bible as a family, pray as a family.  But now that he is nearly 13, I want him to go a little deeper.  So I assigned him some reading.  I don't really want him to do it grudgingly, but I do want him to do it, so it's a delicate balance.  You'll see we're using Seton Religion 7 this year, which may seem somewhat textbook-y for a child who tends to label subjects "boring".  But I decided to include it because it has a lot of information in it that I, as a cradle Catholic who was basically uncatechized after the age of 11, am still learning about.  I found value myself in reading through the book, and so I decided to have Gareth read it, too.  

Notes: I wasn't sure whether or not to include the Zoology Coloring Book, which now turns out to be OOP (or something) because it is "currently unavialable" in its latest edition and only available used.  So I didn't buy it over the summer and left it up to Gareth.  It should probably have been listed in the "supplemental" section anyway.  (My thinking was that building up a decent knowledge of how animals are put together would help in understanding their evolution.)

Notes: This summer I could tell a new interest was about to develop because Gareth would say things like: "That might be interesting, trying to make a new strain of corn." Or, "If you bred a chicken..."  Then one day he said, "I think I'd like to breed that white Ameracauna hen and see if we can get any more that look like her."  (Ameracaunas are interesting-looking, with beards, and lay "Easter eggs".)  So I told him he needed to read up on genetics.  I included the project on his chart, although I wasn't sure just how interested in it he really was.  It turns out he was very interested in it, and has been reading Genetics of the Fowl before bed at night.  He even brought it to the ER with him when he needed his leg stitched up... er, stapled... last week.  (Actually, the illustrations in this book appeal heavily to boys... they mostly deal with genetic abberrations like, chicks with 4 wings, chicks with 2 heads... that sort of thing.)

I'm actually thinking that, together, the study of evolutionary biology and genetics would be for high school credit.  I ran across a CD-ROM text/course from Duke University's TIP program called Foundations in Biology: Genetics, Evolution, and Ethics for grades 7-10.  I thought, "Hey!  That's what we're doing!"  So I'll probably see about getting the CD-ROM for when the weather turns colder.

Gareth has added the book Swords: An Artist's Devotion to his "Military Studies".  He also watches documentaries on the Military Channel.  And he hasn't started the dulcimer.  And his "Field Guide to Imaginary Creatures" is something he enjoys working on here and there, but not a requirement.  I just wanted him to know it was an option if it was something he wanted to do during school hours.

So it's a lot.  Stuff I haven't written down: chicken and turkey chores every day, and he'll have a chance to get his First Aid Merit Badge in October.  New York State requires a certain number of hours in English, Math, Science, History and Geography every year for 7th and 8th grades, and a certain number of hours in Art and Music combined for 7th and 8th.  The state also requires Practical Arts, PE, and Health.  So I'm a little more regulated than some of you (an understatement, actually).

I hope to do a planning/scheduling post about all of this at some point, but right now -- it's Labor Day!  Hope yours is good :-).

Preparing for Junior High and High School

I am sitting here in the family room on a Sunday, with Pippi Longstocking playing in the background, the Daytona 500 on the TV on mute for Andy, Gareth playing Toon Town on the computer, and an 18 month old who should be asleep running around wreaking havoc. So of course I thought it would be the perfect time to write a post about junior high and high school at home. 

Gareth turns 13 this fall and will enter the 7th grade. I'm thinking of this as "junior high", because New York's homeschooling laws change after 6th grade. As of 7th grade, the law requires that homeschoolers complete "units", not unlike those required of high schoolers for graduation.  (Actually, the same definition of "unit" is used for both 7th and 8th grades and high school: 6480 minutes. No, New York could not come right out and say 108 hours.  6480 minutes, and not a second more.) So in 7th grade, we will have to document 108 hours (6480 minutes) of English, 108 hours of history and geography, 108 hours of science, and 108 hours of math, and provide "regular instruction" in health, "practical arts", and library skills to equal 990 hours a year.  At some point in the next two years, Gareth will also have to complete 54 hours of art and 54 hours of music.

Now, this is not really a big deal; we do more than 990 hours a year anyway. But in the process of doing my mid-year tweaking, and in checking the laws for next year, it suddenly dawned on me... I am going to have a teenager. And it also dawned on me, he will be in high school in two years. And then I realized, he's almost done with Saxon 7/6. What next? He's not ready for algebra, is he?

Cue hyperventilation.

I'm trying to do something novel.  I'm trying to be prepared.  At this stage in the game, I know that Gareth learns best with materials he can use independently.  I know that he needs to follow his interests and exercise a certain level of choice in his studies, but I also know that he needs some structure imposed from above, as it were.  I know that he needs time to prepare for changes, and that he needs to know what to expect ahead of time.  And I also know that his particular mix of intellectual giftedness and learning disabilities (what the educational establishment now refers to as "twice exceptional") means that we often have to meet his needs in creative ways. We have to be willing to ditch grade levels, which are kind of irrelevant when your twelve year old is reading a technical book on prehistoric mammals written for adults AND struggling with a third grade spelling workbook at the same time.  But we also have to know how to work the system.  This is becoming important right now, since he might conceivably do high school level work in more than just Algebra I in the next year or two.   

So here I am, reading, reading, reading, googling, googling, googling, immersed in a strange world of "credits" and "transcripts" and "course descriptions". It seems like there are two common responses to high school in the homeschool.  The first is to go the traditional route -- sign up with a curriculum provider, focus on academics, add in a hefty dose of extracurricular activities.  The other response seems to be along the lines of, who needs college? Think apprenticeships, exploring interests.  But I have seen glimmers of a middle way, and I think that is the path we want to trod.  "Practical bookishness," as David and Micki Colfax named it. Should a teenager read Homer? Yes. Should he be able to build a chicken coop, fix a car, and/or make himself dinner? Yes. Should he be able to draw as many imaginary creatures as he wants, write novels instead of papers, and read stacks and stacks of science fiction novels to the exclusion of all else?  Well... yes and no. (And I say this AS an SFF writer who wrote novels and read stacks of SFF mainly during class as a teenager.) If a twelve year old says he wants to be an astrobiologist when he grows up (yes, an astrobiologist), or an archaeologist, or a paleontologist (as well as a dad), how does one prepare him for that?

So here's where the research comes in.   Right now I'm just becoming educated about the big picture.  How does a homeschooler apply to college? What do colleges want from homeschoolers? What's a credit, and how do you put together a transcript? Will it be better to sign up with a traditional curriculum provider starting in 7th grade or to go our own way?  Through all this, I'm thinking about our philosophy, our faith, and -- most importantly -- what will benefit Gareth. And if homeschooling Gareth has taught me nothing else, it's that nothing we do will fit into anybody else's holes. If there are square pegs and round holes -- we're trapezoids.    

(Since this post has gotten really long, and because it's now time to run downstairs to grab some green beans for dinner, I'll list some of the resources I've found so far in another post... hopefully before next weekend!)

 

Navigating the Special Needs Maze

This morning I looked at my kitchen table, which was covered with paperwork from various medical and educational specialists, and I thought, I am going to take a picture of this and post it on my blog, because this is just ridiculous.  Unfortunately, I didn't have time to snap a shot before we had to run out the door on the way to see one of those specialists -- a developmental optometrist.

Now, Gareth has worn glasses since he was five years old because of a mild astigmatism.  The pediatric optamologist we saw in September didn't even think he needed glasses at all.  (This was after a little speech in which she made sure that I knew that some people are good at math, and some people are good at reading, and probably what he needed was a reading tutor... and was I really going to homeschool all five of them?  "I can't even imagine," she said.)  But when this developmental optometrist said, "It looks as if he doesn't use his peripheral vision at all.  Kids like this usually bump into things a lot, they're tense, they're not risk-takers, they appear to be clumsy, they have problems with motor-planning..."

Well, I could have kissed the ground he walked on. 

"Yes!" I said.  "Yes, exactly!  That's him!"

The doctor smiled.  "Well, we can probably fix this, but it's going to take a lot of work."

A lot of work?  Who cares!  You mean, he'll be able to relax because he'll know that someone is walking up beside him?  You mean maybe he'll learn to ride a bike?  You mean he'll be able to copy his own problems from a math book, and writing won't wear him out because he has to refocus every couple minutes, and he won't get frustrated and overwhelmed and have a meltdown because he has to sort through too much information on the page?

I tell you, I would have kissed his shoes if that hadn't, you know, been frowned on.

Gareth's visual problems aren't everything, of course, but the optometrist did say that often with this kind of therapy ADHD symptoms and even the frequency and severity of tics improve, because it peels back a level of stress. Gareth still has fine motor problems -- those are neurological, too, and are often experienced by kids diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome.  He may have auditory processing problems, which is the next test we're supposed to subject him to.

Sometimes -- often -- I am reluctant to put him through another test, to bring him to see another specialist.  I worry that he's going to be reduced to a string of letters instead of being viewed as an individual worthy of dignity and respect.  I worry that we're going to cause him a lot of stress for nothing.

But today at least we got a little closer to the end of the maze.

***For information on learning difficulties and vision problems, visit the Optometrist's Network.

   

Inspired to Write

Without a computer during the day, I find myself writing many blog entries in my head all day long.  But when I can actually sit down at the computer, all the words seem to have found good hidey holes and refuse to come out.  This also may be my problem with fiction at the moment.  (But only if it's a very loooong moment...) 

Writing has been on my mind this week in particular because I was privileged to witness its birth in two of my children, ages 9 and 7.  It was a sweet moment, mainly because my eldest has had such a rocky road getting to this point. 

Gareth didn't come wired for handwriting.  Many kids with TS don't.  Problems with motor planning are common, and Gareth, unfortunately, is no exception.  He still holds his crayons in one of the oddest grips I have ever seen, though after three or four years of work, he now holds a pencil correctly most of the time.  The muscle tone in his hands and arms is low. Until recently he tired quickly, and when Gareth gets tired, his very low threshold for frustration is breached.  It doesn't take much, and once anything gets over that low wall, nothing productive can be accomplished until equilibrium is established again.  In the past re-establishing the equilibrium demolished by the act of merely copying a sentence or two exhausted all of us to the point at which we often just gave up.  (This applied to math and reading, too, all the subjects he initially found difficult or boring).  I would retreat into my homeschooling books, devouring one after the other in a search for some approach that would help my child not feel as if basic skills were a battle that he was losing.  The unschooling books told me that he would start writing eventually if we just provided the right environment.  The books on encouraging your child to write told me the same thing.  But I was a writer, and my kids often saw me writing, on the computer and by hand, and talked to me about my writing, and yet my son had absolutely no desire to write anything down for himself, or to dictate anything for me to write down for him, or, well -- anything to do with words, if it didn't involve me reading to him.

This was very discouraging to me.  I figured that I was the only writer in the universe who had no clue how to go about teaching writing.  I knew how I had started writing my stories: one day I was sitting in my grandparents' living room and I had nothing to do.  So I picked up one of my grandfather's cheap thrillers (I was twelve years old at the time) and started reading it.  The book was called The Takers, and thankfully, it is out of print because it was terrible, and I immediately thought, you know, this book wasn't born; somebody actually wrote it. 

(I'd like to say I was inspired to write by all the great books I had read, and in a way maybe that was true because at least I recognized schlock when I read it, but, although I was a voracious reader as a child, my reading was pretty spotty.  My parents gave me the run of our (small) rural library, and I was allowed to buy a book whenever we visited a bookstore, which, in those days, wasn't terribly often.  But nobody was there to really guide me through literature, to hand me a book and say, I think you will really like this one, or have you read this?, or simply to leave me books on the kitchen table, the way I do with my kids.  As a result, I missed some important titles, which I am only now rediscovering as my husband and I read them aloud.  The Little House books and Anne of Green Gables are two examples.  As a bona fide tomboy, I never read these books because they were too "girly".  I stuck with my beloved Trixie Belden mysteries and Black Stallion books instead.)

In any case, I sat down the next day with a notebook and a pencil, and I started writing a book.  It began, "The morning stillness was shattered by the hooves of a hundred horses racing across the desert..."  because I really did love those Black Stallion books.  I studied grammar in school, of course, and occasionally I wrote a report in science or social studies, but I can't remember any of my teachers ever attempting to teach us to write.  So when I approached writing as a homeschooler, all I knew was that the writing had fallen out of me one day, and that before I had started writing, I had drawn a great deal, and made up lots of stories with my best friend as we rode our bikes. 

This information was and was not helpful when I approached writing with my son.  I never had to overcome the physical difficulties he has had to deal with, for instance, and words have always been my strong point.  I have always been a pretty good speller, and grammar comes fairly naturally as well, although I do suffer from an over-fondness for commas and a penchant for very long sentences.  (As you, dear reader, have no doubt noticed already.)

Gareth, however, also didn't come wired for spelling.  We have now worked through a number of spelling approaches (including Spelling Workout, Spelling Power, straight memorization, and leaving him alone and hoping for the best, and none of them seemed to help very much.  (We are now about to try AVKO, so cross your fingers.) When you have words in your head that you can't spell and are hard to write, I imagine that it is very frustrating being asked to put them on paper.  Last year I tried to get him started typing, but that effort fizzled as well.

What Gareth is wired for, however, is creativity.  He has spent the last year creating a detailed universe in his brain, drawing many of its denizens in at least a dozen sketchbooks, and telling his sister their stories at night.  (And, oh, the fights I have broken up because he gave her the role of "enemy" whenever he was feeling particularly peeved at her.)  This universe began as part of the Star Wars universe, but now it is all his own.  His sister has been lured into the act as well, and each of them have their own planets with their own histories and characters. 

And on our way home from Vermont last week they began writing those stories down.

I did not expect this development, and it was like unwrapping a gift to find it contained a diamond ring (I mean, if I wore jewelry, which I don't, but it was like that.)  It's not that I want my kids to be just like me, although I do think it's kind of funny and nice that they have chosen to start with science fiction.  It's more that I could see all these ideas bottled up inside them with nowhere to go.  And now they have somewhere to go, and the kids are bubbling over with excitement.  They've each written over ten pages in less than a week -- my son who a year ago would scream about writing one sentence, who would throw his pencil down in disgust, who hated the act of writing, who -- until even more recently -- still reversed many of his letters and seemed unable to make his hand move in the loops and swirls required by cursive -- my son has now written ten pages of a story that is obviously not a short story, but a novel.

Who cares if none of it is spelled right, if the letters stagger one into another.  Spelling is mechanics, and mechanics can be fixed, just like punctuation and grammar.  As a writer, I know that having those basic skills is necessary to effective communication, and yet... all those absolutely necessary skills seem like such small potatoes compared to the thrill of hearing a nine year old boy in the backseat reading aloud to his sister the words he has just written himself: "Spaceships howled across the sky, and the Vulgan fell before the exotic weapons of their enemies..."

A Week at Our House

It's been quite a week at our house.  Here's a taste of what it was like:

• Trips to the doctor Monday and today for Pip, whose pinkeye will not go away.
• Pinkeye for Mommy, love Pip.
• Garlic's ready to harvest!  Dig the garlic!  Try to cure it in the sun except rain keeps threatening... quick, get the garlic, get the garlic! 
• Gee, those bean plants have a lot of blossoms... er, oh, no, those leaves are hiding beans, aren't they?  Oh.  Oh, my.
• Garden math: how many Colorado potato beetles have we smashed today, kids?

And...

• Two days of IQ testing, etc., for Gareth, which he was not happy about.  Andy stayed with the other kids at home while I paced, read, and attempted to write in the waiting room.  The results were bewildering, to say the least, and we're still trying to decide what we should actually do with them... considering the point spread on his IQ test was so large that the IQ number is almost certainly meaningless.  It's sort of a badge of honor, though, isn't it, to be unquantifiable?

And finally...

• Today, Pop started crawling and getting into a sitting position from lying down... all in the same day.  (I am so dead.)

Paperwork #2: Interest Inventory

I spoke too soon about having no paperwork to complete.

Yesterday I sent off the quarterly reports, annual assessments, and our letter of intent to homeschool for next year.  Then we ran Daddy up to the airport for an overnight trip, drove back home through a deluge, and I remembered that we needed to fill out a packet of forms before Gareth's appointment with a counselor this summer.

What a huge pile of forms it is.  And Gareth has his own to do.  Fortunately, his are mostly not boring.  In fact, he had fun last night with the interest inventory, and I realized that I had not been keeping up with him at all.

This is not unusual.  In order to pick up changes in interest around here, I sometimes feel like a dog continually sniffing the wind.  Which direction is it blowing from now?  What's that unfamiliar scent?  Sometimes Gareth isn't really quite sure what his interest is either, but it's my job to make sure he has the books and materials to find out.

If I could define my role as a homeschooler, that would be it.  I am the facilitator.

According to his interest inventory, I have not been facilitating his interest in mythology nearly enough.  I'm lagging behind in computer programming and robotics as well.  And I'm really huffing when it comes to movie making.

(That's okay.  The other day Katydid announced her desire to learn how to stuff dead birds.  "You want to what?" I said, a little nervously.  "Stuff dead birds," she replied.  "So I can touch them and see what they feel like.")

Although this pile of paperwork is going to take a while to wade through, I'm excited about bringing Gareth to this counselor.  We found her through the Hoagies Gifted Page, I like her, and I'm hopeful that she will help him work through some of the issues related to his TS, as well as helping me figure out how to handle some of his learning difficulties while also providing him enough challenge for that intellect in hyperdrive.

Name Change

I'm changing boyDragon's blog name.

When I started this blog, it was really hard to decide on a name for him.  He's an immersion learner, and that means that for weeks or months or even years he is totally dedicated to one, all-consuming interest.  When he was just four, it was clocks.  By four and a half, it was flowers.  (When we went to the Botanical Gardens that year, he startled some of the volunteers working a plant sale by rushing in, arms outstretched and shouting, "Solidago!" -- the Latin name for goldenrod.)  Then came houses and buildings, in which he taught himself to read house plans and developed a passion for Victorian houses and HGTV; Impressionist painting, when he threw a fit in the middle of the St. Louis Museum of Art because their Impressionist exhibit was closed (he was 5); tall ships (I would have called him Horatio then); ancient history; and dinosaurs.  Trying to name him according to interest is like trying to call the kaleidoscope by one of its colors. 

When I decided to call him boyDragon, it wasn't really because of the way he sometimes rages like a dragon, or because of his interest in dragons (although that's there, too.)  It was because I sometimes thought that he'd rather be a dragon.  Because of his TS and his other alphabet soup symptoms (ADHD?  ODD?  I am glad our psychiatrist has never really pinned him down), his behavior is so often out of his control that it's easy to see why one of his favorite games is playing dragon, and roaring around the house and yard.  Dragons are large and powerful and in control.  Even the good ones.

But I am not sure that the name really sums up my son, anymore than naming him "Solidago" or "Horatio" or "Caesar" might have.  It's just one aspect of a complicated and fascinating personality, one which I love to watch grow and change. 

So I am not going to call him boyDragon anymore.  Instead, I am going to call him Gareth. Sir Gareth was a knight of the Round Table, a knight of whom I have always been particularly fond.  I can't say exactly why I'm calling him this, because then I might give away his real name.  But if you know the story, maybe you'll be able to tell a few of my reasons.