Helping my son
I want to write a fiction book for my son Link. I plan to do it. I’ve got the idea and part of the outline prepared. I want the book to be helpful and empowering to him while delighting him.
The trouble is that he doesn’t need a book. He particularly doesn’t need a book if in order to write it I let him spend hours on end playing video games. He doesn’t need me to grouch at him because the writing is being frustrating. What he needs is for me to put down my computer and draw him out of the electronic worlds where he so frequently dwells. He needs me to talk with him and play with him. He needs to interact with people. He needs to face his anxieties and overcome them. He needs to learn how to build friendships when they don’t spontaneously happen. He needs to run around outside and jump on trampolines. He needs to learn to ride his bike. He needs to play with friends. He needs to relate to friends without the comfort of a video game to allow him to avoid talking. Video games can be great for bonding, but he needs to learn other means as well. He will not do these things on his own, not before he has a painful social interaction with his peers. It is my job to make him do these things. It is my job to manage getting him to do these things so that he never realizes that I have an agenda. He should just think he is playing while I know he is being prepared for the rest of his life.
I need to look up anxiety. Link is very anxious about many things. He seriously over-reacts to negative stimuli. He nicked his hand with a knife and spent the next week wishing out loud that knives had never been invented and being afraid any time anyone touched a knife. I can not eliminate anxiety if it is one of his natural inclinations, but I can make sure that I teach him appropriate strategies for dealing with his anxieties. I don’t yet know what those strategies are because this has not been a thing with which I’ve had much personal experience.
My son needs me to plan and help and structure for him because he can not do it for himself yet.
I can still write the book if I want. But the book has to be in addition to rather than instead of.