I never saw the wall coming until I hit it face first. And boy, did it hurt!
It started out innocently enough. Having grown up with female cousins and a sister, I had no idea how difficult it was to creatively outfit a boy. I was thrilled when my son told me he wanted to wear some cool comic book character’s clothes. It gave me wardrobe direction!
He was inspired by an over abundance of Super Heroes in the books, TV, video games, and toys all around him - incredible boys and men doing incredible deeds with amazing super powers!
But I never saw it coming.
When my son was 5 years old, he suddenly started sobbing in the back seat of the car. Alarmed, I looked for signs of physical trauma. But the problem wasn’t physical.
He looked at me with those huge blue, tearful eyes and begged to know, “Why don’t I have any super powers?” - as if the super power fairy had passed him over when he was born.
He was pleading with me. He couldn’t walk through walls. He couldn’t fly or become invisible. He thought something was wrong with him. This was a sincere question.
Ouch! I thought I’d done a good job explaining the difference between entertainment and reality. I had even shown him photos of movie sets, actors getting ready for roles and such. Obviously, there must be too much entertainment implanted into reality! Or so I thought.
My initial gut reaction was to ban him from participation with in these “bad influences” that were giving him false images of a super planet future. Moving into a bubble or the back woods of Montana was not going to happen.
Ponder this long enough and you realize that imagination is a good thing! I, for one, don’t want to squelch it. Kids and adults alike need inspiration and dreams. That’s how we go from good to great.
The question is, “How do we take the Super Hero inspiration around us and translate that into a discovery of our own inherent and unique abilities?”
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