This article was first published in Canadian Children's Book News, Fall 2021 A few months ago, my sister made her way down to the basement, where her 8-year-old son was playing with his Hot Wheels, sending cars flying along an elaborately constructed track and making sounds like a rocket blasting off. “Hey sweet boy,” she said. “Can I tell you something?” He laid aside the Corvette in his hand, suddenly curious. My sister knelt down. “I think nobody tries harder than you to be good. People don’t see how hard you’re trying, because you get in trouble more than other kids. But you try so hard.” Tears sprang to her son’s eyes. He threw his arms around her. “Mommy! I love you soooo much!” For my sister, the road to this moment had been a long one. And she knew there would still be many challenges ahead. “I rarely feel like I can read his heart,” she told me recently. But right then, at least, she seemed to have found the words he needed to hear. “I think he often feels very misunderstood,” my sister said to me. “So when he does feel that someone gets him, it can make a big impact.” * I started writing I Just Want To Be Super! because I wanted my nephew to have a book that made him feel understood. At the time he was 4 years old, and my sister and her husband were growing increasingly concerned by all the negative feedback he was receiving––from his daycare, from his day camp, from other kids, and, despite their best efforts, from my sister and her husband themselves. From all sides, people were expressing exasperation, irritation and outright anger towards him. Not that his behaviour was commendable. He often disregarded rules and instructions, bounding around the classroom when he was told to sit down and insisting on doing his own thing when the rest of the group was assigned another activity. He could also be physically aggressive, getting into occasional fist fights and, once, wresting a tricycle away from a child so abruptly that he knocked the other kid to the ground. At home, it was a similar story: he switched back on his light after bedtime to play with his toys, stomped off yelling and slammed his door if he lost at a board game, and sometimes kicked or punched his older sister. My sister and her husband tried the same approach to discipline that had worked with their daughter a few years earlier: explain the consequences for certain actions and reinforce those consequences in a consistent way. But with my nephew, no consequence seemed enough to alter his behaviour. One time, after an especially difficult day together, my sister found herself having taken every toy out of his room, including his favourite fire truck. Behind his door, my nephew only became more upset, his cries echoing throughout the house. My sister felt like the worst parent in the world. She also felt out of control herself. She had spoken to him more sharply than she had meant to. And it had only escalated the conflict. This wasn’t the relationship she wanted with her son. And she was sure this was not the relationship he wanted with his family or with others. Everyone rolling their eyes at him, sighing at him, telling him over and over “Why can’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that? All I’m asking is this one thing!” She worried, too, about what this constant criticism might be doing to his budding sense of self. He took everything to heart, and she did not want him forming the idea that he was a “bad kid”. She thought about all the wonderful ways in which his high energy could express itself. He was deeply curious, eager to understand how everything worked, from air conditioners to the sun to time travel to how skunks spray. And he was passionately creative, always making things, such as the time he worked meticulously for hours with paper, tape and string to build a model of the human digestive system, complete with moving parts and pretend food that you could pass through it. He wasn’t simply high-energy, either. He also loved to snuggle, wanting his mom and dad and sister to curl up with him inside his pillow forts. He could spend whole afternoons drawing spaceships, robots and imaginary planets. And he was super gentle with animals. When he caught frogs, he crouched down very slowly and eased his hands into the water, closing them in a loose cup around the frog just before it could hop away. He named every frog Emerald and kept it for no more than a few hours in a tank carefully lined with grass, leaves, rocks and a little water, respectful of the fact that he had to return it to the wild a short time later, for the sake of the frog. Once I was walking with my nephew along a beach. A grasshopper alighted on his sleeve. As we kept strolling, my nephew held his arm steady for his tiny passenger and spoke softly to it. The grasshopper never left its perch, as if sensing that no harm would come to it there. * When I write for kids, my hope is to create a story in which they can recognize themselves––a story that meets them where they are, that celebrates where they are, even as it invites them to explore new possibilities. In the case of the story for my nephew, this meant, first of all, trying to imagine events from his point of view, including the situations that were getting him into trouble. What did it feel like to be bursting with energy? To want to blast into action, like a superhero raring to use their powers, only to have everyone always telling you to hold back that impulse? To capture that feeling, I started to develop a story about a young boy with actual superpowers. His adventure begins one morning at home with his family––he discovers a mask, tries it on, and SHAZAM! Suddenly he can fly up, up and away, sprint faster than a lightning bolt and lift a boulder ten times his size. But just because he can do almost anything doesn’t mean he is allowed to. He is still expected to follow the rules, do his chores and think about the impact of his actions on others. At first he finds small ways to be super despite these restrictions––for example, clearing his dishes by levitating them to the sink. But as the day progresses he grows more and more frustrated by the limitations imposed on him. How, ultimately, does the boy handle his frustration? That is the central question of the story. I thought about him doing something super that wouldn’t cause any friction with his family, that would even be helpful, like rescuing his cat out of a tree. The boy could then be satisfied that he had stretched his abilities to the limit, and a feeling of calm could settle over him in the closing pages of the book. But a narrative that simply arched from high energy to low, as if the goal of the story were for the boy to settle down, seemed like an inaccurate description of my nephew. Being high-energy is who he is, not a problem to solve. It can cause difficulties for him and others, but it can also be a tremendous strength. I also thought it was important that we witness another side to the boy, a side of him that might surprise us––perhaps his ability to be super gentle, like my nephew with animals. Most of all, I wanted a resolution that would reckon with the story’s core conflict, which isn’t really between the boy and his family. In the story, the boy’s family play an essential supporting role, but they are not central to the plot. The deeper conflict here is less visible, occurring at the level of the boy’s development. He is trying to work something out, something we all must learn: how to navigate between the pleasure and freedom of just doing whatever we want to do and the importance of taking responsibility for our actions. In the end, the boy resolves this conflict through a leap of imagination, encountering a mighty creature who also sometimes acts before he thinks, but who, with a little empathy and guidance, discovers that it’s possible to be super and to behave thoughtfully at the same time. * If navigating between what we want to do and what we need to do, between what we can do and what we should do, is a journey each of us has to undertake, a particular difference in the way some people’s brains work can make that journey especially tumultuous for them, usually starting from the time they are very young. “ADHD impacts the brain’s executive functioning,” Joanna Adams, a social worker with 15 years of experience in special education, explained to me. “The executive system is responsible for self-management, which involves tasks such as organization, planning and emotional regulation. When this system is not working properly, it can result in a delay in the development of certain traits.” One time when my nephew was six, he had “a complete freakout,” my sister told me, because another kid was playing with a ball that was the colour he wanted. “There were lots of other balls there,” she said. “But he wanted the green one. It was bewildering because from one second to the next he started acting as if he were three years old.” The problem in such moments of dysregulation, according to Adams, is not one of knowledge. “Children with ADHD can often identify appropriate social skills, rules and social norms,” she said. “But they may struggle to do what they know.” Once we begin to understand that kids with ADHD are not “bad kids” but rather struggle with executive functioning, we can shift towards using “more positive strategies to motivate them to do what they know, even when it feels tough for them,” Adams said. After delving into books on ADHD and speaking with professionals, my sister and her husband started to test out a new way of parenting my nephew: whenever he succeeded in managing his emotions and impulses, even in miniscule ways, they would praise him for it. They would acknowledge the extra effort it took him to not act on his first instinct. And when they could see he was losing control––getting wild with sticks around his sister or squirting an unsuspecting neighbourhood kid with a water blaster––they made an extra effort themselves to remain calm. “If he hurt or upset someone, he still had to apologize,” my sister said. “And if he was doing something dangerous, he still had to take a break away from the situation. But we tried to balance holding him accountable with understanding that it was harder for him to manage his behaviour than it was for other kids, and also tried to demonstrate in our attitude towards him that we believed he could get there.” In I Just Want To Be Super!, the boy’s parents approach their son’s super side with a similar attitude. When he wants to fly off to play while still wearing his pajamas, his mom tells him to please get dressed first. When he wants to throw that boulder he’s able to lift, his dad kneels down and explains to him, “You’re a super kid. So you need to be super careful. A rock could hurt somebody.” When he wants to pick a wheelbarrow-full of tomatoes in the garden, his mom lets him know that they already have as many as they can eat. (And after he hurls a tomato all the way to Hawaii, we see him taking a little time out under a tree.) Aside from setting reasonable boundaries, though, the parents allow their son to be his super self. Even when he protests that he “just wants to be super”, they take his outbursts in stride, as if confident that he is capable of doing what he needs to do even though it’s a struggle for him, and, as my sister put it, that he can get there––which, finally, he does, in his own time and imaginative way. After the book was published, a few people commented online that they wished the parents had told the boy explicitly that his behaviour was “wrong” and even punished him for it. But as my sister and her husband were discovering, a more positive and compassionate approach, one that still emphasized responsibility, could prove far more effective. “He became much better able to control his emotions, to channel them appropriately,” my sister said. “Instead of hitting when he got angry, he would run away to his room to calm himself down. It’s still a struggle for him, and for us. But at least now home is a place where he can feel good about himself. And my hope is that one day, when he’s behind the wheel of his own life, he will have enough tools to put on the brakes when he needs to, so that he can feel positive about his high-octane engine, and use his energy to take him where he wants to go.” * My sister and her husband were nervous about their first meeting with their son’s grade one teacher. The school hadn’t contacted them about any disruptive or aggressive behaviour so far this year, but they were prepared to hear more of the kinds of negative comments they had gotten in the past. “Your son doesn’t listen. We can’t handle your son. Your son is a big problem.” His teacher glanced through her notes for a moment, looked up at them and smiled. “Let me just say, I adore your son.” My sister wept. His teacher told them about how kindly my nephew was treating a fellow student, a young boy who got overwhelmed during transition times, such as at the end of the day when all the kids had to gather their things. The other students mostly ignored this boy, but my nephew would go and fetch his backpack for him, sometimes even put a consoling arm around his shoulder. The teacher, observing this interaction, had asked my nephew if he would like to be this boy’s official helper, and my nephew had embraced his new role with pride. My sister and her husband gained allies after my nephew started public school. Suddenly most of his teachers, who had been trained in child development, didn’t see his behaviour as an issue. “They understood that some things were more difficult for him and might take him longer,” my sister said. “But they always believed he could do it.” One day, my nephew’s teacher invited his grandma––my mom––to visit his class as a guest storyteller. The book she brought out of her bag was I Just Want To Be Super! “That’s me!” my nephew jumped up and shouted, excited for everyone to see all the super things this boy could do. His teacher gave him a moment to settle himself down on his own, which he did. Then my mom opened the book, showed everyone the first pictures, and began the story. Andrew Katz is the Forest of Reading-nominated author of How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read (published simultaneously in French as Comment attraper un ours qui aime lire) and I Just Want To Be Super! (Je suis Super Nino!). His upcoming picture book, A Starlit Trip to the Library (Voyage de nuit à la bibli) will be out in Fall 2022. Comments are closed.
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