My kid is amazing

[Joshie]

I have an amazing kid. Her scientific mind is awe inspiring. I don't know any adolescent girls like her. Her favorite chicken died about two years ago. The other day she asked if she could dig her up. Now, she'd asked before but I'd always said no because it just seemed morbid, but this time I said it was OK. She very carefully dug the area up a little bit but didn't find anything so she filled the hole back in. After school today she brought me a small wad of dark gray and white hair and asked if I knew what it was.

Some critter with claws dug up the hole she started and refilled. There was hair spread around the hole. I have no idea what it is. She decided to take it to school and see if her biology teacher had any ideas.

How many 15 year old girls would grab a wad of hair from the ground and bring it inside? Is it terrible to be proud and sad at the same time? Things like this make me wonder what she could have done had she not been born so terribly premature.

[CJBegins]

Makes me wonder if a rabbit was going to make a nest there. She sounds like a neat kiddo.

[Harry Chickpea]

Sounds like a very young Julia from "Murdoch Mysteries."

[Danaus29]

Was the hair short and soft or long and wiry? It does sound like a rabbit was trying to make a nest there.

If we were the same age, she and I would have been best buds with similar interests.

My mom and grandma both had strict rules about no non-edible animal parts in the house. Grandma was not amused by the frozen snake and Mom was not amused by the injured bat.

[bluefish]

Sounds like my 11 year old. She's always finding hair, poops, bodies in various stages of decomposition and wanting to examine them. We bought a microscope just for that sort of thing when she was 6. She gets really excited when she finds 'things' inside dead/rotting bodies. I think it's awesome when kids of any age are that curious about the world around them.

My little ones' thing is bugs, I'm not sure I'm up to that, though.

Way to go for your kid!

[Taylor R.]

She sounds a lot like my son. It's amazing to watch the way their minds work, and it's wonderful to be proud of their unique way of thinking. My son is high functioning autistic, which makes his way of looking at things very different from the average kid. I LOVE that. He notices different things than an average person does, and he interprets things in his own individual way. I think it's important to encourage kids to pursue their strengths.

[Joshie]

The hair is around an inch long and downy. The colors are dark gray/blue and bright white. Some of the hairs have a coarser, brownish tips even though they aren't coarse. I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I believe she took the hair to school. I took some pictures and will have to get hubby to load them to the computer.

Thermo, when I was her age, I wouldn't have touched anything like that. I wanted to stay indoors and read. Even so, I went for my MS in Zoology. She looks at animal poop. When one of our barn kitties recently gave birth she picked up a dead one, studied it, asked me to look at it with her, and then buried it.

Taylor, it is amazing to watch a kid's mind. She is also on the spectrum due to her extreme prematurity and/or metabolic disease. She has learning issues from her prematurity and school is not her thing. I sometimes mourn the loss of what would have been, silly though I know it is. She is perfect the way she is. What we need to help her figure out is how she can support herself using her own set of wonderful strengths. She is a cool young lady.

[Taylor R.]

Exactly! What some might call her difficulties now have the potential to be what makes her great at what she does in the future. My son was 6 weeks premature as, though everything seemed just peachy at the time, but when he headed to school we realized what we had always seen as his little quirks were more than that.

[Bret]

Good work.