A fine young man.

Yesterday our eldest child turned 13!
Exciting, momentous, magnificent wonderful times.
As his parent I could not be more proud of the young man he is growing up to be.
I tell him often. 
I don't want to look back and regret not saying the things I felt.
And I want my boys to grow up knowing it is good and healthy and normal to speak your feelings with honesty.
He was as excited as it is possible to be.
He understands the significance of this birthday. 
It is the one that means a leap towards adulthood.
His growth gives that away.  He is taller than me now.
 As one of his little brothers said yesterday- he is a man-child.
He knows this term from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle book.
It reminded me of one of my favourite poems.
You may well know it...
It is a fine treatise on humanity.  It expresses all of the things I wish for my children to understand & to know and to live by.

My 13yo is well on his way.....

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

by RUDYARD KIPLING

I had a look on his iPod to see the song he was listening to. Here it is.
Perfect, just perfect.