How do you say “Torture Fun for the Whole Family!” in French?
Posted by Heather in Gifted Children, Quirky Kid Dossier, School is for dummiesHow do you say “Torture fun for the whole family!” in French? I do worship French things so I think that would be a sophisticated euphemism for describing the social skills therapy we’ve been going to.
I had planned to share our experience on a week-by-week basis, embracing my philosophy of psychological nudity here on my blog. Being a Light-Bearer and all, I want other mothers like me to know all sides of this 18+ year path of raising a Way-Shower. But that weekly synopsis hasn’t happened for two reasons.
#1 We get home from therapy and I just want to drink. At 10:30 in the fucking morning.
#2 I haven’t been drinking lately (I do recognize the point where I could possibly rely on it too much) so instead I come home and promptly fall into a comatose state until selective amnesia takes affect and I forget the entire 45-minute session.
Since I’m 4 sessions behind, let me give you a sort of Cliff Notes version to my memoir, working title – Self-Imposed Sobriety When I Really Deserve To Be Drunk.
Session 1: Info gathering session. Internally grin as if eating Whole Foods-quality shit when son tells SLP how bored he is at school. SLP looks at me and responds, “This is where his teachers should be challenging him.” I hastily don my choir robes and await the preaching. Internally break apart as son sobs and sobs when they talk about how he’s been teased at P.E.
Session 2: Spend entire 45 minutes trying to convince son to even step into SLP room while he says he can’t take the stress of talking about being teased, stays in the hall and then runs away if we try to approach him. SLP suggests I motivate him with a prize, as if we’re dealing with a true eight-year-old and not a 30-year-old trapped in an 8-year-old body. Play along with her idea, shout treat offer down the hall to him only to have son reply, “I know you’re trying to trick me, Mom!” SLP looks to me for an answer to the unanswerable question, “What motivates him?” What motivates a mule bent on non-cooperation? A cattle prod?
Session 3: Son actually steps into room (yay!) but tells me I’m wasting my money. SLP tries to keep things light by discussing making friends instead of the trauma of being repeatedly teased. This works for 15 minutes before son breaks down again crying, because he’s doing the things she is saying he should do and the kids are still mean to him, he doesn’t understand why. I manage to swallow huge lump in my throat as I hear this through the door.
(In between session 3 and 4: Witness son meeting a middle-school age boy at neighbor’s house where he initiates a typical social conversation, if typical means 8-year-old discusses ideas on same intellectual level as a middle school student. Okay, not exactly on the same intellectual level. A middle-schooler knows almost as much as son, but not quite.)
Session 4: Two words become one – CLUSTERFUCK. See also words: SNAFU, FUBAR, and BOHICA (bend over, here it comes again).
And that concludes the Cliff Notes of my memoir, new working title – Can I Buy Xanax in Bulk?
Is Payton right that I’m wasting our money? I’m beginning to think so. The trauma of the playground teasing is too close to the surface for him. Even I wasn’t aware of the extent of the gaping wound left on him by the taunts, the name-calling, the rejection.
I knew he had been hurt by it. Who wouldn’t be? But these invisible wounds, how do you know how deep they go? Why didn’t he tell me sooner? How did this happen on my watch – me, the vigilant, protective mother.
I try not to should on myself but it’s hard. I should have been more vigilant. I knew the teasing had been an issue. I should have made SURE it ended.
But I asked him. Many times! Specifically about how P.E. was going. He didn’t tell me. I should have a better relationship with him. I should be the type of mother he would tell.
I should. I should. I should.
I still don’t know how deep this invisible hurt goes. I do know he’s not ready to talk about and relive this.
When he is, we’ll go from there. Until then, it’s summer and, my god, the kid deserves to relax.
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Heather this is so awful. Parents should have been notified of their childrens behavior. I always taught mine to put themselves in the other persons position. Told them not to pick on others. You don’t know what may be going on in their life and it is hurtful.
They ended up being the defenders of those people that were picked on. My oldest ended up in several fights becasue of this. And ship put some whup ass on them. I told her that was no way to behave but at the same time I was proud that she took up for someone that was being bullied or threatened by several at one time.
I know this has to absolutely rip your heart out to see your son in so much pain. It would make me want to kill people. I do hope that you get these feelings resolved for your son so he can get past it. I feel for you. I WANT to hurt someone over this.
Send me addresses.
I’m sorry Payton has to go through all of this. Childhood is never as fun or easy as we remember it, and it’s even worse for kids who live outside of the prescribed box. Children are cruel and adults can be ignorant, but you aren’t some omnipotent power that can change the way the world works when you want. All you can do is your best, and from what I read here, you do exactly that.
Here’s a hug for you and your son. I so know how hard this is. For him AND for you. You are right though, you can’t “should” yourself. I did that for years until finally a therapist shouted at me “WHO SAID YOU SHOULD????” and I was like umm, oh, yeah, right, ok.
Enjoy your summer with your son and hopefully as the weeks go by..things will get better and better for both of you.
Please excuse me if you have already touched on this subject, but, what about a school for gifted kids? My son was the same way all through school. Even with therapy. He wouldn’t talk to them, said school is boring, etc. But he DID have friends. He calls it …. oh hell, what does he call it? Social manipulation or something?
Anyway, his friend Jared, was the same way. They were always in trouble together, failing school, etc. They were both tested and the suggestion of going to a gifted school in Nashville was made. My son was NOT going, because he didn’t want to be “different”. He is now in a correctional facility and never finished high school.
Jared? He went to Nashville. That boy blossomed! He can play an instrument handed to him, do any math problem and is just brilliant. He did a complete 180 and what a success story his life is now!
My son? Bull headed and stubborn. Dropped out of school in the eleventh grade, had a hit and run, didn’t go to probabtion because it was “stupid”, moved out of state, got in a fight, got picked up, got taken back to Texas, passed his GED test with the highest scores ever in Texas and is now has 17 college credits. I honestly believe he just needed structure in a way that wasn’t avaible here or at his dad’s, and IF ONLY I could have made him go to the school in Nashville.
Anyway, didn’t mean to pour all that out, just trying to help. It seems your son would do so well with kids “like him”; kids who are intelligent and not your typical mean-ass pre-teens who will certainly make fun of and tease anyone who is “different”.
Sweet, sweet Heather: it happens to the best of moms. I know. January of 2008, my son just broke down and cried at 10:30 PM, how everyone in class is teasing him, and he just can’t take it anymore.
I totally blew it. More than you, on a BIGGER scale than you: I had all the clues, and missed them. Just like a big, huge, dumb shit.
Clues (that I missed): he had lost 6 (Six!!) lbs., he had been throwing up daily, he had been waking me up at 3 AM with “can’t sleep.” He had been crying at school for no reason ( I later found out), AND he had been bringing home his lunch untouched. SO, did I figure any of this out? Did I put 2 and 2 together? Nooo….
SO, you see, it happens, I don’t know why. I thought I was the most on to of it mom out there. I took all that and just thought he had the flu. We had him to the Dr. 3x that month with continuing complaints of the flu.
Long story short: I ask about everything now….hope I don’t go overboard and turn into Howard Hughes’ mom now, and examine him top to toe daily, and check for lumps, bumps, bruises…SIGH….
P.S. That scene, of him shouting, “I know you’re trying to trick me, Mom” is movie stuff.
Awwww, honey. I’m so sorry. Your sons genius will shine through all of this and in a few years, it will all be a faint memory. We are all with you here!
I was teased horribly as a kid! I feel for your son. And, see, my first inclination when I hear some kid picked on my daughter is to go all Mama Bear. Find kid. Kick kid’s ass. My mom rocked Mama Bear mode. We’re Italian and from New York and were living in Phoenix. Amusing.
And really, I’d keep some of that money socked away for liquor…
I’d run with the fact that he seems to do well with older kids. My son (and myself at that age too) just cannot get along with kids his own age well. He’s at a different level than they are, and they resent it, so it resorts to fighting. He’s the biggest, so it doesn’t usually lead to teasing. But when I started making an effort to introduce him to kids a few years older than him, the difference was amazing. Once he was able to develop his social skills with the older kids, he started doing a little better with kids his own age, almost like he learned patience for their immaturity.
Now, he’s almost 15, and those friends are 17, 18 years old – so we ARE struggling with that. But he has friends – and that’s what’s important to me.
My kids are too young for this yet, but this kind of taunting and trauma is precisely what I dread. I have no answers, only sympathy. But I do not think you should beat yourself up about this: all you can do is move on from here. He knows that you care A LOT; he knows that you are trying to help. Perhaps you are right that he needs a break from therapy, especially if he thinks he’s doing all the things the therapist is staying he should do, which it seems to my not-a-therapy-professional self might inadvertently end up blaming the victim. Go with your gut. You will find your way through this. Together.
Hmmmm..interesting….
http://radicalsahm.blogspot.com/2009/06/sobriety.html
don’t worry about why he didn’t tell you..sometimes when you’re really hurting its just easier to tell an objective listener rather than one of your own who you know will hurt even more. Maybe that way, you are not wasting money coz this stuff needs to come out even if you are hearing it indirectly.
I’m sorry. Kids are really cruel, but then so are a lot of adults…just in a more refined, inconspicuous way.
You’re a strong mom and I think you are totally right to follow your gut on this. Hang in there!
Amusement de torture pour le famille entier ! »
Payton is just so smart. I would love to hang out with him. It sucks that the other kids are mean to him and that the school is not doing anything about it. It really does. It’s unfair, and it’s teaching those kids terrible lessons about the way they treat other people. I can’t imagine how hard it must be. Enjoy him this summer.
Please dont send him back to that school.we switched our daughter out of a school due to constant bullying and it changed her life for ever for the better. she is now 20 and still remembers the lack of protection from teachers and how painful it was for her in her old school.spend some time this summer and look for a sensitive ,small ,child centered program with like population.I remember being worried that what if when my daughter went to the new school and if it would happen again.thankfuly the school we chose was so aware of the damage bullying can do and how it interfered with learning that the kids that EVEN thought of bullying were kicked out! too indulgent? you bet,and it was the most healing enviroment youd ever want for a kid.those kids wont give your son a fresh start but a new school will. good luck you sound like an incredibly loving mother.
I have a four year old daughter who is learning how to be a little more empathetic… trust me when I say that it isn’t her best, most obvious innate quality but I do believe that it has to be nurtured and/or taught so I’m doing my best to work on it! Part of the reason I feel so strongly about having her think of others is because I am SO saddened when I read stories like Payton’s. It makes me so sad that he is having a tough time right now and I just hope that there are some wonderful kids out there (other than the little SHITS who are teasing him) that can slow down and take the time to learn about his interests and befriend him. Hugs to you for doing all that you are doing to find ways to help him work through everything… I think he will find his way!!
What you said about him being bored and then talking with the middle schooler made me think… is there any way you can have him skip a grade? That would get him with new kids and possibly help him not be bored. If they say he’s not up to it, I bet he would be up to the challenge and probably able to catch up with no problems.
Otherwise, I think I agree with Susan. I hope you have some other school options around. Good luck, and enjoy your summer!