Jay turned nine this weekend. It’s been a busy couple of days that included this sleepover:
People have looked at this picture and questioned my sanity, but honestly, I couldn’t have been happier to have a house full of rowdy boys. Seeing all of them having such a good time made me realize that my son has great friends and is happy. For so long now I have been wishing that he could make friends with some more of the kids in our neighborhood– especially the group of kids in the court down the street. I’ve mentioned them before, and there have been times when I thought he had been accepted into their little clique, but with the exception of one nice younger boy, the group has pretty much snubbed him (none of them are pictured above and were not invited to his party). For awhile this bothered me, but looking at this picture I had what you might call an epiphany– for the past year I have been subconsciously wooing those kids in the court with fun parties and invitations, and you know what? Most of them are little turds. They bully the nice kid I mentioned, and I’ve learned through Jay that they’ve said some unfriendly things to him as well. Never again will I encourage my son to try to play with them, to make friends. They should be so lucky to have him for a friend.
As a child, I was painfully shy and often lonely. I feared that Jay would have the same experience, probably even a more difficult one because of his hearing impairment. I’ve always tried to please others because of my low confidence, and I think I’ve projected some of that onto Jay. I admit, in the past there have been times when I have discouraged behaviour in Jay that I thought others would find “weird,” and tried to encourage him to be as much like his peers as possible. Just seeing those words in black and white makes me cringe. Where is the girl who idolized the misfits in all those Molly Ringwald movies? I once scorned everything “normal” and mainstream, and yet here I was pushing my kid to fit in as much as possible. I guess I just wanted to protect him as much as possible from the rejection of others.
But you know what? He’s great, just the way he is. I don’t want to give him the message that he should change, that there is something wrong with him, just because others can be narrow-minded or cruel. It’s their problem, not his.
As my husband so eloquently put it, “Geez, you act like we have to tie a pork chop around his neck to get other kids to play with him. He’s got friends, he’s fine.”
Yes, he is. And any kid that can’t see that and doesn’t want to be his friend? Well, that kid can just bite me.
I’m glad to see my rowdy boys in the picture as Jay’s friends. The kids up the block can bite me too! In fact, maybe we sould bite them!