a tough week

[I spent too long on this post - this was during mid-September - and still am not ready to publish it - but I don't want it to languish forever.]

Sebastian had an unexpectedly rough week with his friends, a first in our experience. He's been happy with more-or-less the same group of friends for the last three years. They play soccer at recess and then eat lunch together; we see the same children after school and on his various soccer/basketball/baseball teams. It's been blessedly uncomplicated - he often feels closer to one friend than another, but in general he's happy to be in the midst of the twenty or so fellow sports fanatics in his grade. (Are there other children, boys and girls, who don't play sports? Yes... but I barely recognize them.)

But then on Friday two weeks back, two of his best friends summarily traded him for two boys from the other team. Sebastian is fanatically devoted to the existing teams and to the structure it provides - he thinks the teams are fair, he likes to be on his current team, and he felt rejected by his friends pushing him to the other side. He played for a few minutes but then left the game entirely, distraught.

I tried to spin the team switch into a more positive light - your friends think you're worth two players - you must be good! Maybe you'll have a chance to play more offense and score more goals on the other team! He was sad but agreed to try. But then when he actually started playing on Monday, he was unhappy and decided to just leave the game again. This time, one of his close friends actually noticed that he was upset and kept him company playing kickball and eating lunch together. (Yay for Nathan!)

To make matters worse, on Monday evening Sebastian was playing touch football with some friends and got cleated in the thigh. He was hurt and upset and he cried, and some of his friends called him a crybaby. They wouldn't let it go and none of them evinced any sympathy for his bruises. He cried some more while telling us about it. Steve has been trying to gently convince Sebastian for the last year or so that while it's okay to cry at home, in private, and that there's nothing wrong with crying (everyone does it when they get physically or emotionally hurt), that in the world of 9 year old boys, crying too much can lead to sustained teasing. I have not been on board with this messaging - there's too much of me that resists the boy culture that labels crying as a girly thing for sissies - but I finally understood that Steve was trying to protect him from just this outcome. I still believe that my beliefs are right, but I don't want Sebastian to bear the brunt.

Things continued to be hard all week - he wore his spiffy black suit (with a jersey underneath) for picture day and got teased about it all day. Again, one of his friends wouldn't let it go and Sebastian got really upset. During the lunch recess soccer game, his best friend (the one who'd kept him company when he left the game on Tuesday) got upset that Sebastian was demanding the corner kick, and shoved him to the ground. It was just really hard for Sebastian to handle it, and hard for us to figure out what to say to make it better and help him learn - grow - understand. Sigh.

Things sort of sorted themselves out. The teacher noticed that Sebastian was upset and made him fess up about the soccer troubles, the shoving, the teasing. And then she made the various boys get together and talk it out. The soccer teams reverted to their earlier rosters but the feeling of joy seemed dimmed, and half the players left to play football instead. It's definitely been a tough year for Sebastian, given how much joy he gets from recess and the company of his friends - and how little joy he seems to derive from other school experiences. (Direct quote after dinner today, when I asked him to do his extra credit homework: "Why are grownups all so focused on learning?"