Girls
My son is in his third week of public school, a LD (learning disabled) class within a large elementary near our apartment building. He loves it. Mostly.
“The girls don’t want to be my friend.” Alex wants to be friends with everyone. He likes everyone. At his former school there were a lot of problems and drawbacks and I was pissed off at them all the time, but they did somehow get all the kids in these little classes of 12 to like one another. Now Alex is in the big leagues and the kids are more “typical,” and guess what? Nine-year-old girls don’t really like nine-year-old boys.
He’s hurt. And confused. I reassure him. And I remember in my elementary school in Livonia Michigan how it wasn’t so much that I didn’t like the boys as I feared them. I was bully bait until I turned about 15. Now there are three girls–Mona, Bianca and Alaa–who have their girl clique going and they’ve decided they don’t like my Alex.
How could someone not like my sweet, beautiful, funny, bright, kind boy?
But I’m not going to make too much of it.
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I had been educated at home until I was 9. When I started school, my best friend was a tomboy. We kicked chins and beat boys out of being king of the castle (i.e. enormous snow pile). We had mad technique, earned quite a bit of respect and some admiration and we did manage to have quite a few boys who were friends… It was hard though, to know what the rules were when I started and I guess, looking back I kind of just made my own based on who I DID know… It must be hard, as you say, to watch your son having to cope with his first taste of cliques and exclusion. Bottom line, though, if those gals aren’t into your boy they don’t deserve him darnit!
Well they did not get all the kids to “like” each other. They got all the kids to interact with one another in a civil manner in a small group in an enclosed environment. That does not constitute “like.” That constitutes “tolerate under duress.” It is different.
If it were me, I would buy him a copy of How to Make Friends and Influence People. But I am not a parent. [smile]