Jake Herron - Neighborhood Detective

My 6 year old son informed me this afternoon that he has now decided to be a detective. I assumed that he was adding it to the list of 100 other things that he wants to be when he grows up, but I was wrong. He has decided to be a detective right now. He likes to read a lot and one of the series of books that he likes is Jigsaw Jones (who is a kid detective). Apparently, the latest Jigsaw Jones mystery that he just finished inspired him to this latest endeavor. He immediately began rearranging some furniture in our bonus room because he needed a detective desk. He also found himself a detective journal in which to take down notes about his cases. He then set about making flyers to pass around the neighborhood. The flyers said, "Have a case that needs solved? Call (our number). Your neighborhood detective, Jake."

Now, Jake comes up with some doozies sometimes and they almost always involve passing out flyers to people in the neighborhood about something (like joining some sort of club), or making something and then wanting to sell it door to door for $5 each, or wanting to ask neighbors to employ him in some way so that he can earn money, etc. I never quite know how to handle it because I don't want to discourage him or squash his little entrepreneurial spirit by telling him that he can't do it or that it's not a good idea. But, I also don't want his spirit to get squashed by neighborhood kids laughing at him, or by him feeling badly that nobody buys his $5 book of pictures that he has colored and stapled together. Jake is such an amazing kid who is truly unique (in a great way), but if you don't know him, sometimes you just don't get him. So, my solution is ALWAYS to send him across to our wonderful neighbors and friends across the street, who know him and love him well, and let him "start" with them. I usually then find subtle ways to divert his attention to some other scheme.

So, when he said that he was going to go pass out his flyers around the neighborhood, I suggested that he first just leave a flyer at our neighbor's house so that he could "practice" solving his first case with them...before trying to solve other people's cases. So he did. And, because they never let our kids down, when they got home tonight, Jake got a call from them asking him to solve their "Case of the Missing Soccer Ball." Like I said, they know Jake well, and I'm sure that when they saw the flyer, they knew full well that he was serious about it. They gave him a couple of clues and Jake told them that he would get right on it first thing in the morning.

I wish that I could somehow convey to you how seriously he is taking this, or that I could imitate him for you on this blog post. It is beyond hilarious. He truly believes that he is a detective now. He immediately got out his journal and wrote down the information they had given him. The journal says...

First Case

Riccardi's

Lost soccer ball

Black, white stripes

Sydney juggling outside

He is absolutely thrilled to have his first case to solve. He has come out of his room about three times tonight to talk to me about it and, most recently, just informed me not to be worried if he's not here when I wake up because he might already be out front working on the case.