More growth

Poor wee S and his immature social skills.


This morning he told me that he didn’t want to go to school today. Immediately my radar started humming, and I had to force the issue to find out what was causing his angst.

Historically, when S claimed that he didn’t want to go to school it was because either LB was picking on him, or one of LB’s friends had threatened him in some way, so I immediately became concerned. I asked him if he had a test that he hadn’t studied for – head shake to the negative. I asked him if someone had done something to make him feel threatened – head shake to the negative. At this point he informed me that he “didn’t want to talk about it.” Now, knowing my son as I do, I knew that was not the exact truth. He wanted to talk about it, or he wouldn’t have mentioned anything. He just didn’t know how to go about talking about it.

After a few more probing questions, I guess S realized that my “pit bull attitude” wasn’t going to let up on the subject, so he decided it was time to talk about it. He told me that he was afraid his actions of yesterday were going to cause him to lose a friend today. Then began the “which friend” question, followed by the name of a friend or two. Heaving a big sigh (such a drama queen, my S) he told me that he was worried that he was going to lose a girl’s friendship because he had ‘asked her out’ yesterday and she had told him “No.”

He was dreading have to ask this girl to “forget yesterday ever happened.” I asked him why she would want to do that and he explained to me that he had been friends with Lil A for years and then after they ‘went out’ for that time in September, she is no longer his friend because she now dating another boy. I told him that it doesn’t have to be that way, and that as he gets older, he will ask more and more girls, then women, out and will sometimes have to face being rejected. It’s just how things go. I then tried making light of the situation by telling him “It’s not like you asked her to marry you and she said no, you know.” He did share a little chuckle over that idea, and then started to get out of bed.

Amazing how just sharing something with Mom can make ‘huge’ problems not seem so bad. I’m just very grateful that both of my son’s feel that they can talk to me about various subjects. My hope is that this continues well into the future. (Cuz told me that sometimes her son’s share too much information now that they are in their mid to late 20’s, but I think I would rather that than not being aware of anything. Well, maybe…)

Last night the boys helped me pull out the Christmas decorations from the crawl space. I was in the crawl space, S was just at the entry way, and the A-man was lugging the boxes into the pool table room. After about the 6th box, S exclaimed “How many of these do you have, Mom?!” Apparently my children feel I have too many decorations. After I had all the boxes in the room, I was starting to think that way to!

The A-man and I managed to get the banisters decorated with both garland and lights. I then laid out the ‘snow’ on my dining room hutch and set up my snowman family. Still need to find the white twinkle lights to complete that area. Then S and the A-man both helped me get the Christmas tree set up. Tonight will likely involve putting the lights and decorations on the tree, and maybe starting to move the ‘regular’ nick knacks to decide where the Christmas things will go. My plan is to clean each area just prior to putting out decorations, but we will have to see what happens.
I don’t think I remembered how much I had decorated last Christmas until I started pulling things out last night. Case in point – I forgot that last year I had put garland and lights all around the cupboards in the kitchen as well as on the fireplace mantel and the windows in the basement. I must have really been in the spirit last year – will have to see if that happens again this year.

I’m also hoping to get the front entryway to the house cleaned up and maybe make it a bit more festive looking. Tomorrow or Sunday for that.