Friday, October 25, 2013

You. Are. Gay.

Genea has been having trouble with her friend across the street. The girl, we'll call her Dippy, lives in the house the Skankenho and Fucktardmoron moved out of. I'm wondering if it is cursed. Anyway.

Dippy seems to have a few of her own issues with impulse control and judgement. And lying and overall buttheadedness. She's also know to "flip" in a second. She is Genea's friend, then not, and back. While a lot of that is normal for girls their age, for Genea each tiff is the equivalent of waterboarding. She comes home and freaks out and I found out recently, then begs Dippy to forgive her. Of the nothing she did. Normally, Dippy forgets she is pretending to be mad about the made up event and is fine the next day.

I tell my girls they don't have to be nice, but they do have to be polite. Dippy is not a good friend, focus on the girls who are real friends. Say hi, and move on.

However, for an unknown reason, Dippy has been amping up her buttheadedness level with Genea on the bus. Of course, a school bus was the inspiration for the book "Lord of the Flies" and I believe the scene with the heads on spears actually happened in a city nearby. A friend of mine knows the person who heard about it. The bus is a shrink wrapped microcosm for aberrant child behavior.

At any rate, Dippy was supposed to hand Genea a cracker from another kid and instead tossed it on the ground and stepped on it. Genea said, that was rude, and now Dippy is refusing to speak to her etc, etc. All the usual buttheadedness. So Genea is already on edge (don't ever mess with her food!), when some stupid boy says to her "you are gay". Stupid Boy then sticks his foot 2 inches from her face. She replies "no I'm not", and kicks him.

(By the way, we have her convinced the bus driver stealth calls us. There have been other incidents when she was standing on the seat, jumping, throwing stuff out windows and so on and almost lost bus privileges but it mostly stopped when she realized we kept finding out. Truth is Teena races home first to tattle).

Okay! Probably I should be coming down on her for being physical. Instead I just asked her what the rules say she should have done. Secretly, I'm impressed. I hope she kicked him hard. Little shit.

All this history brings me to the part I do have a problem with. I don't know if Genea is "gay" or not. I am certain though, that Stupid Boy was not being conversational with his comment. Picking on Genea for her reaction is like going to a canned hunting farm. Easy, and not really fair. She's quickly flustered, struggles with word finding, and her emotional meter is set at 8 out of 10 most days. She's sweet and tries hard to be friendly, yet often comes off more awkward than anything.

The Husband and I discussed the behaviors of everyone involved and gave her suggestions on how to handle it next time. She demonstrated for us how school has taught her to put her hand up and say, "stop" and I almost went into a full body cringe. It's a good idea, ok, just somehow it looked and sounded bizarre when she did it. Almost guaranteed to create more problems. Anyway, that part is handled but calling someone gay to be mean is not acceptable. Now, how do I separate that out?

Just about every response I can think of would be exponentially worse.
"I'm not gay but why would you care?"
"Gay is not bad but acting stupid is"
"Get your head out of your ass idiot, your brain is suffocating".
SIGH.

I want to make the point to her that gay is how people are born and it's not a thing. It's not a thing to use to insult people with.  It just is. Calling a gifted child a smarty-pants as a taunt is similarly ridiculous. Why do some kids feel such a need to go after non-normative kids? The comments are meant to degrade, maybe to forcefully shame one child into acting within the groups parameters. Or something anthropological. I really don't know.

What I do know is that yesterday was not the time to go into human sexuality, but I can't leave it alone either. I'm planning to discuss with her again what gay is, and why it's not an insult and should never be used as one. We've discussed it plenty of times and so the facts will not be new. Kids shouldn't be taunting others regardless.

Is it enough to tell her why and be done? With another child it might be different but I can't imagine coaching Genea to tell the kid that gay is not an insult and he shouldn't be using it as one. I think I want her to stand up for other kids, other people, but as of yet she's not good at standing up for herself. As I write this right now I realize therein lies the answer. We have to work hard on what I suspect will be a long-term challenge for her, being picked- one, taunted, bullied. I can give her the facts, logic and knowledge but I guess we should probably hold back on defending others until she is better at managing herself.

As for Dippy, I sigh. We're telling Genea, stay away and don't bother with her. You are a good kid and a great friend and you don't deserve someone being mean to you. Genea's need to repel rejection is burned into her brain. Dippy's need to control and manipulate seems to be strong as well. I'd been letting Genea handle that "friendshit" (baaaa ha ha, that was a typo but I'm leaving it ha ha ha), with close monitoring but it seems time to squash it.

15 comments:

  1. So sorry about these two kids who just seem horrible. We do the same thing - "just stay away from XYZ," etc but sometimes they can't stay away -eg in my older daughter's case - the child being awful to her was her partner at school - think desks next to each other, sharing a worm bag (don't ask), etc. And here your daughter can't stay away from them since they take the same bus. One thing that we have tried to give both our girls some confidence on a long term basis is doing Karate. It teaches discipline, respect (definitely need some of that in our house) and physical confidence. Our two are teeny tiny compared to their peers so we wanted them to have confidence that their bodies are strong and know how to use them appropriately. Which means that my oldest is not afraid of her tormenter but just hates being near him. So just throwing this out there - would something like that help Geenea? Cause honestly if someone sticks a foot in her face - she should be reacting! So I actually applaud her for telling the girl that she was being rude and hitting the boy. I know physical violence is not what we want our kids to be resorting to but if she had no where else to go (pinned in a bus seat) and this kid was threatening her physically - then standing up to him in a physical way is OK with me. As for the gay comment - don't know what would have been a good response for her to use. Things come to mind but they all sound weird and stilted when I write them down. Good luck - let us know how this story ends.

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    1. I will totally not ask about the worm bag! Shudder!
      You are right about Karate. Self control and respect for yourself and others is huge. Genea is also physically awkward and I thought the deliberate, slowed movements would help her. I signed her up for a class but the husbands schedule changed and we wound up taking her to the performing art studio instead. I still think it would help her a lot! Also though, she was only going to go because her Daddy was going to. She had no interest in it. (and I agree, if someone strikes her first, tough luck on them if she strikes back)

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  2. "Whatever."

    It's short and sweet, and how can anyone argue with it?

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    1. stamp my forehead with a big ol' DUH. Quick and to the point. Sheesh. I overcomplicate sometimes!

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  3. Oaky, so I am commenting not so much on this post, but commenting a) because you told me to and b) because we are thinking about adopting, and I love that you are so freaking normal. I gave up the whole perfect Mom thing somewhere between baby boys 2 and 3. Thanks so much for waving your freak flag.

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    1. Ok, I love when people listen- can we pass that on to my kids? Ha ha.
      THANK YOU, I started this blog when everyone had rainbows and unicorns adoption blogs, determined to tell our truth. I appreciate that you appreciate my freak flag :).
      Well if you are thinking of adopting you really should start a blog yourself!

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  4. lol, we used to use the "gay means happy" when I was in school. For some strange reason the thing was to call each other "gay wad". I had NO idea what gay was or a gay wad for that matter. We'd say, gay means happy and happy is beautiful so thank you for the compliment! (hmm, I may tell the kids that one actually)

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  5. Yes! We also have a Dippy next door. My son is wonderfully/terribly sensitive, and this girl just puts him through the wringer. After the bazillionth fit of tears, I taught him his to roll his eyes and say, "Whatever, Dippy." We role play a lot. I get into it. Then I say things like, "SEE!? Don't you see how her words are stupid?" I don't really condone "stupid," but Dippy has it coming. We've tacked on, "I'm going to go home now, Dippy. See ya when you want to be nice."
    I wouldn't get into the meaning of "gay" right now. She wouldn't get it. Just the same as trying to explain the etiology of any other slur. Not the right developmental age.
    Does G have any friends? Could you point out how Susie Q, Jane, and Delores are friends, and do they talk to you like that? Nope! Dippy ain't a friend! Why, you ask? Because her heart is mean. I don't know why. Dippy doesn't know why, either. But it makes her very sad, and then she says mean things. She doesn't know how to be a friend, so she can't play with you right now.
    Note, I *do* let our Dippy in our house occasionally, but it's funny--- once I taught my son this stuff, Dippy has lost her magical lustre a bit. He doesn't ask to play with her half as much now.

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    1. She does have 2 other friends but Dippy is right across the street. I like the, whatever Dippy, I'll see you when you can be nice. Its not as final and will leave it open ended for her. We've tried to explain how manipulative it is when Dippy does this stuff, and how she keeps doing it because then Genea begs her to be friends again. I need to get that magical lustre off of Dippy!

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  6. Laughing at your very appropriate typo and WAY impressed with G telling the Dipster she was rude and for defending herself.

    Agree with the above--she doesn't need a huge explanation and agree with you that first she needs to take care of herself.

    Get those freaks to move out and maybe we could move in and our girls could be friends and I'd win the lottery and....

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    1. ha ha, I was laughing when I saw the spell check line under it. But so dead on!
      Seriously, if you two could move in that would be the BEST! I don't know what it is about that house!
      Turns out the Stupid Boy is the bus drivers kid, so I'm sure she LIT into him. She could lose her job if her own child is causing trouble.

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  7. These Dippy characters are just the worse- and they seem to be everywhere! I hope Genea's able to handle the 'friendshit' soon. And I too think a properly said 'Whatever' to Stupid boy would work wonders! Also, have I mentioned how awesome your writing is? Your names for other people had me cracking up! :')

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    1. Thanks! Yes, the Dippy's of the world seem to be everywhere. Argh.

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  8. I wonder if "sexual orientation" responses or conversations might be lost, because I think "gay" has moved on from actually relating to something to meaning "stupid" (or, what we used the word "stupid" for when I was in school). Be that as it may....you are right about busses. The worst year of my life was the year I had to ride a bus. The last day of school my mom let me walk home. I couldn't believe I'd suffered like that all year, when I could have just walked an hour and escaped it!

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    1. I see what you're saying there, and "gay" is a tricky one with it's original definition of happy, to homosexual. I see it as like using the word "retard". Plenty of people have mental retardation as their medical diagnosis and I don't like others using it in a way that is taunting towards people with disabilities.
      It had to be the worst bus experience for an hour long walk to be a much better idea. Yikes.

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