My almost ten year old son says one of his favorite things to read is "thought provoking books" and he likes for us to read them together so we can discuss them. He liked reading "The Giver." He is currently enjoying Brave New World and Reclaiming Science from Darwinism. He loved the March issue of National Geographic's "Inside Animal Minds." He was interested in psychology for a while and now he is learning about law and legal issues, his interest sparked by a video game and court shows and listening to his cousin's new husband who is in his last semester of law school talk about working with people who on death row. These are things the average kid his age are just not interested in. He says they are all sports kids--something he is definitely not.
I think we might read Animal Farm next. Not even his older gifted friends are interested in reading any of these books, so that leaves only me or sometimes my husband for him to talk to about them. I know there are people in my town that think it is wrong to let a child read some of these books, but my husband thinks it is okay and I am also enjoying reading these books. But I think reading and enjoying the books he reads sometimes contributes to his feelings of being different. His doctor suggested making him watch cartoons so he would have more to talk about with kids his age. He didn't want to watch cartoons and I didn't make him.
I know people think we are weird. I could feel the guys who replaced our heating and air system watching us as my son listened to Mythbusters and then a history show about World War II dogfights while simultateously working on spelling bee words and definitions and then stopping to look up on the laptop what his allowance would be in yen. I know they were listening because my son said he would like to try a Japanese restaurant some time and one of the guys told him he knew where a good one was located. My son said he would love to actually go to other countries, especially Japan, to experience other cultures. Nobody talked to him after that. If he had been a sports kid, they would have talked football, but nobody knows what to say to my kid. It is uncomfortable sometimes. They ask him what sport he does and he says he doesn't do sports, he does musical theater and they just say "oh" and that is the end of it. The same thing happens when he tells them about the spelling bee. He hears these same adults talking to other kids about sports and they say a lot more to them than just "oh" and he can't help but notice this and feel like he doesn't fit in.
