S-P-E-L-L-E-R....

A few weeks ago Ethan came home with a list of 1,000 words. He was chosen to represent his 3rd grade class in the school spelling bee. He would be competing against 4th and 5th graders. Ethan has never had an issue with confidence. Knowing that he'd be the youngest age group competing only motivated him. We practiced. The first week we went over quite a few words. Then it kind of lost it's excitement. I would mention to him every once in awhile that we should be practicing, but he kind of shrugged it off. This last week we were in St. Louis with Shawn. I tried to practice on the drive over, but 10 minutes in he was done. So, I left it. I decided this would be the time where he would learn that practice is needed to excel at something. Only Shawn wasn't willing to give up. I think they spent 6 hours or so poring over the words. Shawn went through the extensive list and put dots by the ones he kept missing so I could review them with him. We made it through most of them this morning during breakfast. Ethan was acting like his typical over-confident self. Not in the "I can't stand this kid" kind of way, just the "so what if I'm in 3rd grade. I've practiced" kind of way. Hmmm. I tried to let him know that I only expected his best. Winning isn't always necessary to feel good about ones self. The bee started at 3:45. Let me tell you. I was a nervous wreck. Not because of all the finagling I had to do to get my other kids from point A to point B (thanks Krystal and Christmas), not because Presley had gotten her 6 month shots 1 hour prior, but because my son was going to have to stand in front of an entire audience and spell words correctly. I was scared for him. Scared for him to fail and feel like a failure. Scared that my "lesson" on the importance of working hard would backfire and he'd just feel like a loser. I found my seat and my stomach was in knots. Ethan entered with the rest of the spellers and I hurried over to tell him to go slow, take his time, and then I kissed him on the cheek. I don't know if that embarrassed him or not. I was too nervous to care. 50 spellers started out. They started with the easy list. I was surprised when some kids got out on words that are commonly used in the English language. I'm sure nerves played a huge part. After 4 rounds there were only these 8 kids left:

Yep. Ethan was one of them. Surprisingly there were a few 3rd graders. Ethan attributes that to the confidence that age brings. "The 5th graders aren't going to study because they will just think that 3rd graders can't win. Us 3rd graders are too scared NOT to study". He is pretty bright for only being 9. After the 5th round they were down to only 3 competitors. The one looking at the camera was one of them.

Wow. At this point I thought he actually might win this thing. 3 people left. Two were 4th graders. One was my son. Crazy. He was up. His word was "isthmus". He spelled it without a hitch. And later admitted it was a complete guess on his part. The next two girls spelled their words wrong. He was asked to spell one more word correctly to be declared the official winner. "Turquoise". (Sadly, I will have to spell check this before I publish just to be sure I spelled it correctly.) He was declared the official winner and given a 50 dollar savings bond. And he holds the title for the 2nd 3rd grader in all of the schools history to win the spelling bee. My Ethan. Hard work does pay off. Being a natural speller helps too. But it's the work that helped you win.