Oh, Eeyore...

[JJJ]

School has started and Eeyore is not doing well. He has had at least one peer conflict each day and says he hates his life.

I'm beyond frustrated because nearly all of these conflicts would not have happened had Eeyore followed 'the plan'. There is a severely-difficult child girl that he is under direct instruction from both me and the school that he is not to speak to, nor remain within 10 feet of her. This is not due to his behavior but due to her ability to trigger him. She is a bully and loves to cause issues and many kids are under 'orders' to walk away from her and tell a teacher if she is following them. She cornered him and started telling him that she was sick of him walking away from her and he better start talking to her. Eeyore said he couldn't follow the plan because it hurt her feelings. He does not get that her total goal is to make him feel like ****.

The other issue is the disaster that Eeyore made of drill team last year. I have ordered him to stay far, far away from the team. He has class with some of the team members and I don't care if he eats lunch, etc. with members of the team but he is not allowed to go near the practices because it becomes all about the drama. Yesterday, he was not in the pick up area after school, I had to park and walk across the entire campus to get to the drill area and drag him back to the car. Somehow being screamed at by the team members that he ticked off last year doesn't sink into his brain that he is no longer welcome. Part of it is the teacher's insistance that EVERYONE is welcome. The teacher has even hinted to Eeyore that he should find other activities and not come and 'watch'. (Eeyore went completely delusional and declared himself the general of the drill team and told everyone they had to listen to him, etc. Needless to say, the ACTUAL cadet commanders were not thrilled that he was claiming the positions they had earned nor were the other students going to tolerate him yelling at them. I should have let them kick him out of the ROTC program for lying but since he went to the psychiatric hospital, we decided to treat it as a mental health issue and not an honor code issue.

He is livid because he made plans to meet his girlfriend at tonight's football game and now he is not being allowed to go. He can't handle the 6 minutes between classes without having a peer conflict and he wants us to drop him off for 3+ hours of unstructured time?!?!?!? I could almost guarentee that he would have the **** beat out of him within 20 minutes.

The horribly sad thing is that he has friends, he has people that like him; but he rejects that as being important and focuses so hard on trying to force a relationship with people who have made it absolutely clear that they cannot stand him.

He gets upset with me because he says that I don't see how hard he is trying. I told him I do see it, but that he doesn't see how he is his own worst enemy.

I used the example of one of his friends, R. R is an outstanding hockey player. I told him that I wanted to be a better hockey player than R and I was going to work at least 3 hours every day to accomplish it. Then, every day, I spent 3 hours in the driveway, working on my dribbling, jump shots, lay-ups, etc. I worked really, really hard but I wasn't becoming a better hockey player than R and I was really frustrated and upset. I still had to spell it out, how working hard was great but if he wasn't working on the right skills, he wouldn't accomplish his goals.

The problem is that his goals are to have everyone like him and to win a bunch of rewards, provided that they are easy to win.

 

[TeDo]

Wow, I don't even know what to say. That actually sounds VERY similar to the types of situations difficult child 2 gets into. He gets "obsessed" with specific people and he just does not get it when he's going overboard and doesn't see when they don't want to be around him anymore. I try to teach him appropriate friendship "boundaries" but he just doesn't see it because the other person (MOSTLY girls) doesn't come right out and say LEAVE ME ALONE. They try to be kind and avoid but he needs to hear the literal words from them to get it.

 

[AnnieO]

Jett... Yup. Some kid on the bus threw something at the back of his head the first day, another kicked his bookbag out of the aisle the second day (when asked if his bookbag was supposed to be in the aisle the answer was "well no but I put it there and he didn't ASK me to move it"), a third "told on him" that he was reading when they were supposed to be working together (Jett, reading voluntarily - NOT)... When asked if he had talked to the teacher/bus driver he said he didn't need to, or that the other kids did, or that he tried to but the teacher wasn't there. So - did you tell the teacher later? Well no. How are they supposed to do anything about it if you don't tell them? Well they should KNOW. Jett - don't complain to me if you're not willing to help YOURSELF.

Of course that's all condensed, but same things... Sigh.

He just wants so badly to be liked he becomes a PEST and then annoys the snot outta everyone.

 

[JJJ]

I try to teach him appropriate friendship "boundaries" but he just doesn't see it because the other person (MOSTLY girls) doesn't come right out and say LEAVE ME ALONE.

They have come straight out and said LEAVE ME ALONE but he is so sure that if they would just listen to him, it would be all better...

How are they supposed to do anything about it if you don't tell them? Well they should KNOW. Jett - don't complain to me if you're not willing to help YOURSELF.

He just wants so badly to be liked he becomes a PEST and then annoys the snot outta everyone.

Yep, Eeyore vacillates between wanting the teachers to fix it by ordering everyone to be nice to him and being mad at the teachers because they don't know what he is thinking.

I just got off the phone with the new asst principal and she is going to talk to Eeyore during study hall (1:1 in her office) and try and get him to understand that she is there to help him if he can tell her what is going on. Last year's asst principals were a huge positive influence on Eeyore. This new one comes highly recommended from South campus and she sounds great. I'm hoping he clicks with her.

 

[TerryJ2]

Ohhh, I'm so sorry! What a mess. I don't have any suggestions in regard to making him "get it."
I'm sending hugs and a breather from frustration.

 

[DaisyFace]

"They should know!!!"

I can't tell you how many times my difficult child has said this (or, more accurately, YELLED it) when something didn't go the way she wanted. I think it is very hard for difficult children to grasp that other people do not see the world from their point-of-view. difficult child has done the worst things to other kids, thinking she was being their friend - and would end up completely blindsided when said "friend" wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. It's so hard to watch them get crushed over and over again due to their own overbearing behaviors.

 

[Wiped Out]

JJJ-Sending hugs your way. It sounds like such a difficult situation.

 

[greenrene]

"He just wants so badly to be liked he becomes a PEST and then annoys the snot outta everyone."

"It's so hard to watch them get crushed over and over again due to their own overbearing behaviors."


Yep.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I've never seen this done, but I have read about it somewhere. For some kids with social skills deficits, they create a "circle of friends". These are hand-picked volunteers from school, who take turns including this individual in their activities - planned to not be a problem... so, the basketball star doesn't take him to a game, but instead to hang out with a few other people in the lunch room, or to watch something happening in the gym, that kind of thing. These volunteers are trained/coached/mentored by the school counsellors, and develop a plan together. They let the person they are helping know when they are socially appropriate, and when they are not, through pre-set signals. The person being helped commits to the program, and agrees to work the "system". It can do wonders for creating social skills, because they don't have to "try so hard" to get something, anything, for attention... they have it.

No idea how you'd start it, or if the school would consider it...