Be Your Own Hero

My kids are seriously little versions of Jason and I when it comes to their taste in entertainment. They love all things nerdy, especially super heroes. If you know us, you know we have tons of super hero related stuff and it's spilling over into our kids, trust me my boys have tons of Batman toys and the girls are now getting their own collection going with the DC Super Hero Girls. I'm not sure where their sudden obsession came from, but they really love Harley Quinn and I wouldn't let them see Suicide Squad, so we compromised. We allowed them to see the "Hero of the Year" movie because it was a much more appropriate version of a Harley Quinn movie. While watching the movie we had a pretty awesome discussion about how we can all be our own heroes somehow. I feel like when you have a "different" child-transgender, diabetic, has cancer-you try to look for characters like them and they never seem to be represented, so sometimes they have to do it themselves. Callie of course took this mission to a whole new level and decided she is truly going to be a hero for kids who are different and feel left out. When I asked her how she was planning on doing this she said"I'm going to make one friend a day!", when you're five making friends is much easier than it is at my age! This conversation happened almost three weeks ago, so at breakfast this morning I decided to revisit it and see how she was doing. She told me she befriended several kids, but didn't make a new friend everyday like she had planned. Apparently some of the kids took more convincing then others, but I was proud to hear the kids she befriended were lonely and had no one to play with. This small action may seem silly to us adults, but I remember being the kid at the playground who didn't have friends. I remember my heart breaking when I would get picked last on every team, ever. To have my five year old daughter tell me she marched right up to a girl who was sitting alone at the park and looked sad to ask her to play on the swings-that shows me that heroes really do exist. Heroes are everywhere, they are in all different shapes and sizes, sometimes they're even living in your house. My five year old showed me what it means to be an everyday hero, a simple hero-and she didn't even need a cape! So thank you Callie, thank you for showing me that kids are the best kinds of heroes ever-maybe one day DC will write a comic book about you.