Out of My Depth

Apparently second grade is not too young for The Boy to suffer the first slings and arrows of rejection.  Since he's a bit tactiturn by nature, I find that the easiest way to figure out what's going on with him is at night, when I just hang out with him in his room for a few minutes at bedtime.

This past Friday, he made one of the offhanded comments that usually lead to a longer saga about something that's bothering him, and after some prompting, I discovered that he had mentioned to a friend of his that he liked a girl in his class, the friend had gone and told said girl, and the girl had responded with, "But he's not cute or tan!"  and the girl's best friend had then begun extolling the virtues of one of those interchangeably mono-browed (and tan, although probably fake-tan) Jonas creatures.

So then The Boy pretended that he had been kidding all along to save face, as we do in these situations when we're seven and mortified.  It was heartbreaking to hear, and as a bonus double-whammy caused all those uncomfortable flashbacks to the un-fun parts of growing up that I had successfully managed to suppress.  Arg.

I'm not good with this stuff, as a rule.  I'm not touchy-feely, I'm impatient, and to top it all off my immediate reaction when someone is mean to a family member is to go set something on fire, that something preferably being the person who was mean to my family member.  Bottom line:  Edna Garrett I am not.

However, I have had enough training in modern social mores to refrain from arson, and so I did the only thing I could think of--after a big hug, and the usual bromides of "that sucks," except edited for a seven-year old audience, I said, "Well she's just a shallow, no freckle-having, scary-hairy Jonas-loving poopyface, so there!" 

Amazingly, that seemed to work.  I figure I have a few years to figure out how a mature adult can guide a middle-schooler or adolescent through the same trauma, or I can just use my time to come up with more age-appropriate versions of the above insult, just in case.

In other news, Friday will mark The Boy's first foray into a birthday party sleepover.  His initial reaction was not enthusiastic, but a new sleeping bag and a promise to tuck puh-dog into his backpack (and a promise that he can call and we'll come get him if he gets scared) changed his mind.  For now.  I think.