most creative

We have tried it all. Baseball. Aidan was the kid laying in the out field cloud watching. Praying that a ball would not come his way. Counting the minutes until the game was over. Football. Was just confusing. Soccer. Too much running. Oh and its hot. And knee pads aren't comfortable. Basket ball. Oh wait  we didn't formally try that one. By the time the flier for that one came around we had already figured out that sports were not Aidan's forte. And that cleats don't come in wide sizes. Before we completely gave up we gave Tae Kwon Do a whirl. Finally something he loved. Until another boy in the class got reprimanded for speaking out of turn. It ended in tears. With Aidan in tears. He wasn't even the one that got yelled at?! But it was enough for him to not want to back.

We spent hundreds of dollars on registration fees. Uniforms. Gear. Bats. Balls. Mouth guards. Cups. You name it we bought it. The brand new glove that cost a fortune. The cool Nike cleats that gave Aidan blisters. We made trips to Sport Authority and Foot Locker. We went to opening day ceremonies. Sat in the hot sun and froze on bleachers. All in hopes there would be one sport. One team activity.  One thing that he loved. That he excelled at. Just one place that he felt like he belonged. A boy that doesn't like sports?! Can't be?! Or can it? We were looking in all the wrong places.

Aidan has always loved to read. Comic books in particular. When we read them to him he would tell us "No. Read it like they would say it.' Then he would repeat the words the way he wanted to hear them. By the time we were done with the comic book he had acted the entire thing out. Playing every role. He would want to read the book until he memorized it. He would use his action figures to set up a whole scene. Take hundreds of still shots with my phone like he was making a movie. Everything had to be perfect down to the placement of all the figures arms and the way he tilted their heads.

He loves Lego's. He talked us into buying him the Death Star from Star Wars.  It cost $500. Had 3,000 pieces. I was sure that he would lose interest after the first page of the insanely complicated instructions. I was wrong. Night after night he sat at the dining room table with his dad putting together this massive Lego space ship.

Aidan is the only kid I know that would take an entire Saturday to create his own board game. Hours upon hours of creating a story line for the game. Pages of rules and objectives. An intricately drawn board of another world. Hand sculpted characters that he would line up like chess pieces. Each one named and given a unique set of powers.

We have bought him packs of printing paper. Dozens of sketch pads. His grandpa has brought home rolls of blue print paper for him. Gone. All gone. The crayons are worn down to nothing. Markers dried out. Paint bottles emptied. Fingers callused from hours of gripping his artistic tool of choice.
So there it was right in front of us all along. Aidan is not going to be the next Babe Ruth. He won't be getting a football scholarship or competing for  a world cup. And ya know what? That is more than okay with me. My son is not an athlete. He is an artist. He is the most creative kid I know. I have finally stopped searching for something that he will love that the rest of the kids his age love. He doesn't need to belong to a group. He needs to own who he is. I need to let him do that. Instead of wasting time on finding new things I decided to put more energy into harnessing what he already loves. So he won't ever score the winning touch down but he may give Martin Scorsese a run for his money some day.