caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the boy who lived So I'm taking a reallllllly long lunch today to go see Harry Potter. Is that wrong? See, here's the thing. This is YMB's weekend with the Dementors, and we know they will take him to see it. Perhaps we are being petty, but Blue and I really want to be the ones to take him. We started reading the Harry Potter books together almost two years ago, now, and they were the first books YMB every really loved. And we introduced him to that, and love them almost as much as he does. And he's been looking forward to the movie for months, and so have we. So it's just something we really want to share with him. The Dementors, on the other hand, couldn't care less about Harry Potter, and will take YMB because he wants to go and because they can, and it gives them a chance to do something with him before we do. So Blue and I came up with the following plan. Blue is going to pick up YMB from school a little early, and I'm going to meet them at the movie theater. It's a total surprise for YMB, and it's a treat he really has earned. We went to conferences on Wednesday, where his teacher told us that he's doing really well, and trying very hard to stay settled and pay attention. He's gotten A+s on his most recent math and science work, and even spelling, which is his worst area, is improving. He's really doing so much better. So we're going to tell him that this is a special treat because he's been doing so well and trying so hard at school and at home. Not a reward; we don't do rewards for behavior that we expect. But he knows that our basic theory is your consequences reflect your actions. Good, expected actions result in good things. So that's the deal. We'll go see the movie, I'll come back to work to make up the two and a half hour lunch, and Blue and YMB will go home and wait for Dementor #1 to come pick him up. Besides which, Blue and I didn't want to wait until next week to go see Harry Potter either, and it would have hardly been fair to go without YMB, even if he'd already seen it. And even if the Dementors do take him this weekend, I somehow think he won't mind seeing it twice in two days. The Dementors will probably be extremely pissed at us, but oh well. It's not like they discuss their plans with us. And it's not like we could ask them not to take him -- they wouldn't respect that, and it wouldn't really be fair to YMB. Life is so damn complicated. This morning Blue and YMB had a long discussion over breakfast about how YMB doesn't think he's made any friends here as good as the friends he had with his grandparents, whom he still sees on their weekends. The thing is, I think he hasn't really made the effort to make good friends here because, one, he'd feel guilty about it, and two, they always provided the entertainment for him -- he never really had to even make friends for himself, since they have a day-care center and he had these captive playmates after school every day. I think he somehow thinks we should be providing his friends for him, and is let down that we're not. And he's got friends at school, and a few here in the neighborhood, but not having done this before, I'm not really sure of the ettiquette. Do we just call up these parents, whom we've never met, and say, hey, bring your kid over to some stranger's house to play? That seems wrong. And I don't want YMB to be one of those pushy kids who invites himself over -- we've got one of those in the neighborhood already, and it's rather unpleasant. I feel bad for YMB, but it's not like we keep him in a cupboard under the stairs. We try to make him go out and play when the kids in the neighborhood are outside. He rides the bus -- not every day, but several times a week, enough to get to know the other kids around here. He's got buds at school, I know he does from being in his classroom. I don't know what else to do. I remember how hard it was for me at that age, feeling like everyone else knew some secret I didn't that let them fit in, but I can't help him make friends, or force other kids to be friends with him, which I have a feeling is what happened at the Dementors' daycare (now there's an image -- daycare with Dementors. It's like Azkaban, only with mac and cheese for lunch). Anyway, it's just one more thing we have to figure out a way to help him through. For today, we're taking him to the movies. 10:15 a.m. - 2001-11-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||