What a cesspool of human emotion.
I guess when a child; one who up to this point has been relatively grounded, incredibly smart, had good social skills and confidence, when this child enters Middle School it must be required to check your brain at the door. Honestly, there must be a (overpaid) person from Admin standing at the door with a big bag....or is it a vacuum? Vacuum makes way more sense...... anyway, they are standing at the door waiting to suck every ounce of common sense and critical thinking skills out of these children.
Last night my son (6th grade wonder that he is) found himself in the middle of a girl and his friend, this girl likes my son's friend. Now it is not the first time this has happened in the 3 short weeks school has been going on. (I guess girls still do the "Ask John if he thinks I am cute" routine) Thanks to modern technology this has become a lot easier - ahhh the joys of texting, a girl doesn't even have to use her vocal cords anymore to express how she "feels" about a boy. I wasn't taking it too seriously but did instruct my son to NOT become that friend in the middle - do NOT become the middle man- because it is always the messenger who gets shot.
As we are working through these things last night I start to realize that he is really being effected by these things. He is already starting to get sucked into the cesspool of idiocy. It is hard to be the wing man even if you are 12 I guess. A ways into the discussion he became emotional and started talking about how hard Middle School is (OHHHH how I know son- one of the worse times of my life!)
::I asked him what the purpose of "dating" someone in 6th grade was.
::What does one do when they have a girlfriend in 6th grade? (it's not like you can go pick her up and take her to the movie)
::How long did he think any of these "relationships" would last?
::Other than to be like everyone else why did he think he needed a girlfriend?
::I then went onto explain that unless there was a girl that really "tripped his trigger" one that he couldn't stop thinking about, one that he found incredibly good looking, funny, smart, interesting and so forth then he should not be so worried because he was only signing himself up for trouble.
::I told him to watch how a few of these "dating" things turned out- to time them and see how long they lasted, to listen to the "drama" that comes of them, to witness with open eyes how very little it means to have a g'friend this long (I mean what do you say? "Can I pick you up at your locker and walk you to Science" )
Sigh..... I don't know
What I do know though is you have to deal with the crap that comes from a relationship for the rest of your life why start so damn young??????
Ok Ok so there is one example.
Then this morning he turns on his phone (that he received for his birthday to communicate with us after school, and I have to say it has come in handy before school too) as he turned it on it vibrated in his pocket. He stopped in the middle of the kitchen and spaced out for a second and said "ohhhhhhh" he then proceeded to hit the vibrate setting and vibrate it up his torso to his face and I stopped him somewhere around his ear as he continued to (in a girly voice) say "ohhhh, ahhhhh, mmmm, vibrating" *shaking head* what the heck ?
Other recent examples:
Today he walked out the door with a pair of shorts, short socks, a t shirt, and an unzipped sweatshirt. It was 40 degrees this morning.
He forgot his backpack- when he came back he didn't put his homework in it.
This child that has worried about his clothes his whole life now hasn't brought home his gym clothes since the start of school 3 weeks ago.
He forgets his homework assignments (when normally he would panic over forgetting something when he hadn't)
I don't think he has opened a book for pleasure since the middle of summer
(no biggy for most kids but this boy would whip through HUGE chapter books- 1 a week - since 3rd grade)
He doesn't seem to understand the simplest of concepts he used to understand many grades ago
He literally is going brain dead I swear!!!!
Now, I read a study awhile back that spoke of this. It said how (especially) boys are effected by hormones and brain development. It is to the point where the frontal lobe of their brain is underdeveloped enough that they display the same kind of behaviors one does when they are drunk (poor judgement abilities, risk taking, slower thought process, fuzzy thinking, etc) Maybe that is his problem. Maybe he is in a way brain dead- or at least suffering from an under developed, hormonally impaired brain........
