My youngest son is now seven. This child was 7.14 at birth. He came quick and easy and was really a pretty easygoing baby, very laid back, slept well and ate well, all the things you wish for in a newborn, save for the random screaming at about 5:30pm every single day until he turned four months old. It was like a clock. My mother tells me I did the same thing.

I think I've mentioned before that he came out peeing, and I am not even kidding, before I saw the doctor lift him up above my sheet-covered knees I saw the stream of pee arc out and hit her smack in the face. (She was not new to this process though, and was wearing a mask not unlike something you'd see on someone preparing to solder steel, so it got in her hair, but not in her eyes.)

This turned out to be something of an omen for him, the peeing. He's a bit mischievous.

Anyway, Will is now seven ears old. He likes being seven, he likes being in first grade, he's not a baby kindergartner, he's a -grader now just like his brother. He's very competitive, mostly with his brother and it probably doesn't help things that brother is a little on the wee side, and therefore Will is pretty much the same size, and I think this adds to the competitiveness. It allows him to ride the same rides at theme parks, therefore passing the fear factor milestones earlier or at about the same time as his brother. I don't know if this is a good thing or not.

He really never had any fear, anyway.

We've been having a really hard time with his behavior recently, his temper has apparently come into it's own, and where he's always been an exceptional child in terms of just how bloody stubborn he is, lately I've become completely unable to deal with his throwdowns and we often end up screaming at each other. I wish I was kidding. He is still sometimes the toddler who is cuddly and likes to snuggle, he hasn't lost that sweetness, but more often than not he is also angry, and beligerent. He growls at me when I suggest that he stop playing with his toys and come to the table for dinner. He runs to his room and slams the door like a teenage girl when I then reach down and wrench that toy from his hands as a discipline for that behavior. I noticed recently the hinges on his door need to be tightened, it's been slammed so many times the screws are coming loose.

Some of this stems from his frustration with his brother, how they pick at each other constantly. Some of it stems from his inability to focus and pay attention at school, or here at home, he knows that his mind wanders and that he forgets what he was doing and it frustrates him as much as it frustrates me and his dad and his teachers and anyone else who's ever tried to get him back on task fifty times. He knows his mind seems to be working differently, that he can't pay attention even if he really wanted to, that other kids in his class don't have this problem. And I struggle, I tell you, I really struggle with how much to tell him about that. Whether to tell him I went through it too, when I was his age, only I didn't have as much help as he will. Whether to explain it to him fully, and help him find the tools he needs, or to just keep that knowledge and that help behind the scenes, where maybe it won't damage his self-esteem.

But of course, If you've ever taken a child to a pediatric behavior specialist who mostly works with families of ADHD patients, and seen the look on his face when he starts to figure out what's going on, you know that you've already damaged his self-esteem. And there's nothing you can do about it.

Let me just tell you how much it freaking sucks, as a parent, that you are damned if you do and damned if you don't start the early intervention process when you know you've got an ADHD kid on your hands. And you know it when it becomes obvious, you know it because Oh My God, this feels so familiar it's like static electricity, and there's nothing you can do about it except ask for help, even knowing that help will get him labeled different at school, among his teachers and peers. There is no drug that can make it go away, there is no fucking Omega 3 gummy vitamin that tastes like sugar crusted fish oil that will fix this.

You know it because he's frustrated, and he's angry, and he's quick to throw down, and yet all he really wants to do is snuggle up in bed with you and read Magic Tree House and forget all that other stuff.

A couple of weeks ago Drew came home from soccer practice angry, disillusioned, and ready to quit. He's on a new team this fall, for a couple of reasons, the biggest being because my husband couldn't coach his soccer team anymore. Work is killing him, and leaving the office before 6pm twice a week was making other people passive-aggressively question his work ethic, not exactly something you want floating around out there in this kind of economy. So he resigned as head coach of Drew's team.

The second thing that happened is that we've finally reached that age where boys kind of figure out where their athletic strengths are, and it gets harder and more competitive, and the moms and dads are tired of driving team carpool every single night of the week, and the conflagration of these things forces a decision on which sports to focus, and which to drop. And so several of our little team's stronger players chose to focus on football, and dropped fall soccer.

There were six boys left who wanted to play from that team. So we got slapped together with another small team, and a dad who volunteered to coach it from that other team who had never done so before, and there you have the recipe for more drama than I had bargained for.

But I don't want him to quit playing soccer. Oh I'd be fine if he decided that he just wasn't into it anymore, or if maybe another activity was becoming more interesting and he'd prefer to engage in something else. But I don't want him to quit because he's miserable and and it's not fun anymore and the coach yells at him, and also that coach is not his dad. (Who, for the record, did a pretty good job at not sparing Drew when he needed to run laps for misbehaving or not having his head in the game.)

(And who also, for the record, is wallowing in his guilt at having to give up coaching his son in a sport that was his own favorite as a boy. The guilt, it buuuuurnnnnnnsssss the poor man.)

So I started looking around for options for Drew to play competitive soccer. We missed the window for tryouts back in June, we were out of town or something, and also I just didn't want to pay the money - it's about $1000-1300 a year to play competitive team soccer rather than rec. But, I figured, if he's good enough to play at the competitive level, and he likes it, then it's worth the money.

Last week we were invited to come practice with a competitive team on Tuesday night. It drizzled the entire hour and a half of the practice, and I stood there in the light rain watching him play with these other kids and a professional coach - kids were all bigger, faster, and more disciplined - that was clear really quickly. But he hung in there pretty well, had fun, and seemed to like it. The coach invited us back for this Tuesday to more officially try-out, rather than just play around and be introduced.

My husband says to me this morning, quietly, "Listen, I don't think he wants to do this. I think you want to do this." Which is entirely possible. But I am not that parent, I am not going to push my kid into a sports commitment that he doesn't want just so I can tell people he plays competitive soccer, that was not why I started this whole thing. I started it to give him some options, to show him what a higher challenge looks like, and see if was ready to face that challenge. I have better things to do than drive him across town on more evening a week, at an extra cost to boot.

So I asked him. And he said no, he doesn't want to do it. He said he didn't want to leave his teammates that came with him from the other team in the lurch, having to play without him. I understand what he means, his fragile little ego regarding how much they need him aside. What he really means, whether he knows it or not, is he needs them. And he is not quite ready, not quite bored enough, to face that higher level of challenge. And that is totally fine. He's only nine years old.

So we play rec soccer for another year. He agreed not to whine and complain about the coach, that he's choosing to stay on this team over other options. He made a choice, and I'm very proud of him.