"T.V. learner" = note to teacher or not?

Okay

I'm confused on one point -- does the shirt definitely have something to do with the teasing? Or is it more about the special education classes for reading?

Is "TV learner" the extent of the teasing?

I'm a little confused too.

Is he wearing this shirt every single day?
Could that be part of the teasing?

I know you keep it clean, but still.

Re: the name of the shirt, all I can say is one of the hottest guys I ever knew used to wear an old gas station shirt with "Ed" or "joe" or something on it, and it only increased his cool factor.

I have the same confusion of Chai and Sozobe. How is the teasing connected to
the shirt? I can understand "TV Learner" coming from getting extra help, but I don't see how the shirt comes into play. Chai and I made the same point of it can be cool to wear to a shirt with has someone else's name on it. How did they find out it's his old name and why is it a problem?

I had a family nick name ("term of endearment", my mother called it) that I hated, but once my brother used it in front of my second grade friends and they all started calling me it. I couldn't get them to stop until we started JR High. I still have not forgiven my brother to this day.

Another question I have -- what's the timescale? I can't tell if it happened once (yesterday) or if it's been happening a lot.

Thoughts so far:



I totally get this. At the same time, remember that great thread about bullies? What we really settled on was that not giving a damn was the best deterrent.

The tricky part is, nobody wants to enable bullies. And "not giving a damn" when one DOES give a damn doesn't always work.

My first instinct though is to not add any fuel to this particular fire right now -- that doing so will make things worse for Mo, not better.


I'm trying to think what I do when sozlet complains about stuff like this. Here's a recreated but roughly representative example:

Sozlet: M. kept bothering me today...! She kept telling me that 6:45 minus 30 minutes was 6:20, and I said it was 6:15, and she would NOT shut up about it!

Me: Yikes, I wonder what was up with her today. What happened when you asked her to stop?*

Sozlet: Nothing! She just kept getting more obnoxious about it!

Me: What did Mrs. T [the teacher] do about it?**

[possible trajectory #1]

S: Nothing!

Me: Did she see what was going on?

S: No....

Me: If it bothered you so much, why didn't you say something?

S: Errr...

[possible trajectory #2]

S: She gave M. a talking-to for not listening to her explanation on the board and for bothering me about it. ***

Me: I see. Too bad M. was having a bad day. [general commiseration]


* Start with the assumption that the kid did something about it at the time if it was that bothersome. This sets up the assumption that it SHOULD be their first response, for the future, and reinforces if that's what they already did.

** From there, emphasize that it's the teacher's responsibility to deal with these kinds of situations -- ones that Mo feels he can't deal with himself but that seriously bother him. In second grade, the teacher can take it from there. (I specify second grade because it's still young enough that the teacher can deal with it without social kickback -- later on it's harder.)

*** Actual result of this particular actual circumstance.

I think all of this is best dealt with in the moment rather than circling back to it later on. (I think you know this too, just saying.)

He wears the uniform a couple of times a week. I think the problem started a couple of weeks ago but it is starting to happen more often. Like, one kid called him that, then a few other kids joined in and now it is just kind of "funny" for them to say it and snicker about it.

This isn't his special ed reading group and not the class reading group but the extra reading group. I'm not sure if the awarness of the spec.ed. group has an effect or not but I have a flicker that it does.

I had a thread not long ago about bully immunity. Mo usually marches to his own beat and doesn't have a problem with self confidence so this latest twist is probably really bothering him. I think part of the problem is that he doesn't understand what the kids mean by "TV learner". He seems to think it has something to do with his real name which begins with a T and not the name he prefers which begins with a K.

He has gone by the K name for about a year and a half. Since we moved at about the same time many people know him simply as K. Before that he tried on five or six different names. When he settled into this one I asked the school to treat it as a nickname since he quit responding to the T name.

I think this is key. I know the T name and it does sound similar. I think this is why I was confused and unsure if the problem was the shirt or the ERG class . I think Mo thinks it's all about the name, but it really might be all about his extra help.
I think it's more serious if the kids are teasing him about his reading class. Many kids gets teased based on their names, but no child should be teased because they learn differently. If it's about the extra help, I think the teacher might have to do some explaining to the class in general how this is very mean. Mo should not be used as an example, but a sensitivity talk would be appropriate.

Mo is strangely sensitive about his name.

He has asked to have his name legally changed to the K name. He knows about name changes from when we had to update all his info after the adoption. I've told him that it is something that I want him to be a older before he decides on something like that.

He does not like to be called the T name but he likes the uniform so much that he continues to wear it even though it calls attention to the T name.

It always takes a while to sort out what is going on with Mo.

ohhhh yeahhh......

I remember Mo's T name now, and the similarity....the association.

butterflynets suggestion might help...where she said mo could tell them "yeah, but I'm a high definition TV." then, he could suggest, like he was part of the teasing..."why don't you just call me "Hi Def"?

If the other kids are laughing at the time, they might grab onto that right away.

Hi Def sounds like a cooler nickname.

If he is that sensitive about the name I think it would be worth the time and trouble to have your brother get him a new shirt. However, I think the teasing is not coming from the name, but rather from his extra help status.

Sounds like the solution all around is getting a new shirt from your brother. It could be presented as a thank you to Mo for attending bro's promotion ceremony and as a promotion for Mo as an "official" act of recognition of his K name.

He could always do what my brother did to a kid that wouldn't stop tormenting him about something in school. One day in the neighborhood, my brother walked up to the kid and roughly tweaked the kid's nose. When asked why, my brother replied "I just wanted to change the channel."

The kid never bothered him after that.



If you have any old TV remotes laying around, give one to Mo to take to school. Tell him to make an overly dramatic gesture of aiming the remote at the kid doing the teasing and tell him to click the MUTE button and tell the kid he's been muted and can no longer be heard until Mo presses the mute button again.


That will give Mo all the power he needs to help him deal with the teasing.

I LOVE that suggestion.

I used to point the remote at this very vocal cat I had and hit the mute button, but unfortunatley, felines are immune to the rays being emitted.

yeah, with mo's ghostbuster devices and such, that would fit right in.

I like that idea too but kids usually get anything that can be perceived as a toy or distraction taken away. Perhaps I could arm him with a smallish "off" switch though.

He can claim to have an invisible remote that only he can see and control.

I caution against adults suggesting "cool" comebacks. We're clueless about this stuff (I include myself in that). What adults think is cool is frequently flamingly uncool to kids.

This is a tough situation. It looks like these kids have found Mo's button. That's what kids do, they fish around for buttons, and if they luck out and find one, that's pretty hard to undo.

At this point I'm not sure if a new shirt will help that much -- they already know the button, and don't need to actually have the T-name shirt in front of them to remember that.

I think the best counsel for Mo is probably to be matter-of-fact about it -- for him to say yeah, that used to be his name but he likes his new name better. He can make sure his teacher knows that. Then beyond that, just don't react much. Be "dry as toast;" don't give 'em the satisfaction of seeing him upset. That's what they're going for. (Push button, get reaction. No reaction, less interest in pushing button.)

I agree that a professional might be good here though, these are my impressions but who knows.

Well, I must agree with you soz.

We adults are embarrassingly clueless.


I don't remember if it was me or my sister, but one of us was going through something with another kid, and our mother told whichever one of us it was to say...fill in the blank....who knows what it was.

It was like "yeah right.....that'll work )

I completely agree with this.

And I'd tell the reading group leader what's going on, emphasizing that you don't
expect her to solve the problem, you just want her to be aware of it.

That's exactly what I did this morning!

She was already aware of it and had told the kid who started it to stop. That was probably when it escalated -- the kids knew they were onto something.

I told her I didn't really want her to do anything about it yet and that Mo and I were working on some strategies for him to deal with it but that I wanted her to know it was causing a problem.

Here's hoping that's the end of it!

Thank you all for the advice. I'm glad I didn't go ahead with the note but I'm also glad that Mo knows I did do something about it.

I agree, but maybe you could tell Mo that the kids could be teasing because he has such a cool shirt. I doubt anyone else has a real army shirt and they must be jealous. That may take a little of the bite out of teasing for him.