I knew this day was coming

I knew it was coming, I denied it for weeks still claiming it wasn't true. Until this weekend when my husband made Kyle and I stand back to back to check for himself so I couldn't deny it any longer.  Kyle is taller than me.  This child of mine who was once so cute and tiny is now adult-sized.  He wears adult sized shoes.  He is rapidly outgrowing the very biggest clothes I can find in the children's department (although that's driven by economical reasons - kids clothes are cheaper).

We've had some new independence this school year with Kyle.  He has his own phone now, and on days he has clubs after school he takes the activities bus home which drops him off at a school near our house.  He walks home, gets himself a snack, gets started on homework - all while I'm out taking the girls to gymnastics and horseback riding.  It hasn't all been perfectly smooth - an incident of Kyle not texting me to let me know he arrived and then not paying attention to his phone so he wasn't responding to my texts.  But that only happened once (because I may have freaked out just a tad and told him he needs to let me know he got home okay!). Kyle's also been showing some great initiative at school this year - getting himself to the bus on time every day, resolving issues with his teachers directly (missed classwork, needing to make up a test).

When Kyle was in grades 1 through 5 I struggled with this kid, I'm not going to lie.  He was amazingly smart but struggled with many every day skills and I sometimes wondered what lay ahead.  I was lucky to have a great support system at Kyle's school - the principal, teachers, special education teacher - a whole team of people who would tell me regularly that Kyle is smart and nice and funny and they loved having him in their class and they were determined to help him be successful.  I really believe all of the work they did at school and we did at home has paid off now when I see this amazing teenager Kyle has turned into...independent, responsible, strong initiative at school...I did not see these traits coming out in Kyle's younger years but I knew they were in there, it's so nice to see them coming out now!