You guys are right!
Showing off and role playing.
That could be the problem. I'm really going to pay attention to that from now on.
Osso, I did misunderstand - now I see where your "parents" comment is coming from. I wonder what making Aunt T's visits that rare might create. I have a feeling that they think she is "very involved" in his upbringing.
"Children of Sanchez" sounds like a very instructive book. I'll be looking for that one!
The TV thing reminds me of "Tobacco Road" a book that left me near crying with frustration at their idiocy.
I'm reviving this old thread with a new angle....
Mo and I just got back from a three week vacation. During the time we were gone and since our return we have had many phone calls from a variety of friends and family and Mo has always been entusiastic about talking on the phone.
Then yesterday Auntie T called. Mo wouldn't talk.
Later he told me "I don't like Auntie T".
Today I mentioned that Auntie T might come by and he said again "I don't like Auntie T".
I thought maybe he was just winding down from our trip and ..... whatever.
But today his mom called and Mr. B's mom called and Mo was his usual chatty self on the phone.
He won't tell me why he doesn't like Auntie T but frankly, I'm getting a bit suspicious that perhaps there is a real reason for his behavior towards her.
Am I being paranoid?
He behaves so differently towards her than towards anyone else. When he says "I don't like her" he is dead serious.
Could be right.
Could be not. Maybe she is nervous around him or something.
Or, of course, something awful.
But maybe a jitteryness...
Tell us again about auntie T...
Not everybody is used to being around children all the time - I am chary of someone being judged weird for just being shy.
I could check back over the thread, but isn't Auntie T the woman without a blood connection who has a Special Voice for Mo and a habit of playing one-up in Mo's blood family?
Kids know phonies--especially when the phonies threaten them in some way.
If he's focusing all his blood family hostility on Auntie T, at least he's venting. His venting is more important right now than Auntie T. feeling Good About Herself. After all, she's not the abused and abandoned child.
Mo's not feeble minded. He has a reason for disliking Auntie T and his reasons--even unvocalized--should be honored.
Slimy Hypocrite is a complicated concept to verbalize, but easy for a kid to recognize.
I'd certainly be very watchful.
And I would be gently encouraging of him talking about why he doesn't like her, without seeming to focus on it much.
definitely listen to those warning antennae
... on a previous post I just loved Noddy's phrase ' the selective velcro of the human mind' - one to file away in the vocabulary!
Yep, Noddy, that is Auntie T.
He used to really like her. Then after one visit he just stopped liking her.
The next "date" they had was when he started crying saying he didn't want to go with her -- that's when I started this thread.
The next "date" was when she brought her visiting parents by for a visit with him. That was kind of weird.
Usually when the phone rings Mo jumps up and down saying "I want to talk. I want to say hello." I'll usually let him yak for a bit so that I can have my conversation in peace.
The other day when she called I said "Oh. Hi T" and Mo made himself scarce. She asked to speak with him and he said "No". I made an excuse and hung up.
She is supposed to drop by this weekend and Mo keeps insisting that he doesn't like her.
Last night I laid down with him at bed time and tried to find out why. All he would say is that she laughed at him. When I tried to find out the context of the laughing he wouldn't say.
Mr. B heard him say "I don't like Auntie T" this morning and Mr. B got mad about it thinking that Mo was being terribly impolite.
I don't want Mo to be impolite either but I do want to take whatever message he is sending seriously.
Set the ground rules. He doesn't have to go on an outing with Auntie T, but he's not allowed to be rude to Auntie T or any other guest in your house.
Perhaps all he remembers is the laughter and not what he did to set her off?
And laughing at and laughing about and laughing with can be hard for people to distinguish, probably because they are often blended..
Laughing....
Usually Mo lives to make people laugh.
I don't know if laughing is really what it is all about.
There is only one "incident" I can even think of....
One day Mo's mOther picked him up for a big family lunch at his great-grandparent's house. Mo was playing outside and his pants got wet so they pulled them off and tossed them into the dryer.
Okay. So Mo's got this weird quirk - he INSISTS on wearing his underpants backwards. To Mo, for whatever reason, this is a BIG DEAL. Even pajamas that have a little pee flap thing have to be worn backwards. Don't ask me why.
When mOther dropped Mo off she asked me about it and reported that Auntie T had made a big fuss about it - about how Mo MUST start wearing his underpants properly before he got in school and blah blah blah.
To me, backward underpants are a complete non-issue.
I know Mo gets really mad when you try to make him wear his underpants the regular way. Maybe she laughed about his underpants.......?
That might well do it.
AND it was a pretty damned insensitive thing to do in front of him, if the reports are accurate....
I still recall the trauma of, as a toddler, being held down and having my dress pulled up, and being laughed at, by our neighbours (a woman friend of me mum's and this woman's mum) because they had discovered I was not wearing knickers.
Knickers were not a big deal to me, and I often didn't wear them, apparently.
They thought they were having harmless fun. I was really traumatised. So it goes.....
Boomerang--
The question isn't Mo's little quirks--it is Auntie T being unkind about Mo's little quirks that is the issue.
Could she be a closet pervert, fixated on little boys' jockey shorts?
Hmm, it would be enough without a perversion component..
makes sense as a reason to not like her.
The perversion angle was lighthearted. Mo has enough problems with unkind laughter without perversion added.
dlowan, that is a sad story. Those "singled out" incidents can be really awful.
The whole backwards underpants thing has been fresh in my mind since I had to explain it 10,000 times over the last three weeks. AND hear it retold to people after that.
My family thought it odd and hilarious but I had asked them not to make a big deal about it in front of Mo (he is rather sensitive about it) so they didn't.
I do think the report from mOther about Auntie T's reaction is accurate. To be honest, I can imagine the whole family having an over-reaction to such a thing. It's hard for me to explain why I feel that way but it has something to do with perceptions of "normal" if that makes any sense at all.
Is Auntie T the sort of person who would use shame as a tool for reform? Ridicule?
I don't really know her well enough to know that, Noddy.
I do know that the family she married into puts appearance very high on the list of normalcy.
I know you read the book "Random Family". Do you remember the emphasis put on the children being in clean clothes and being spotless all the time when they were in public -- even when they lived in some roach infested coke lab sleeping six to a matress? I think it's kind of like that. I don't really know how to explain it other than what I might see as a "quirk" might be viewed as something....... something...... embarassing? by them.
It does make me wonder why he's doing it (protection? he likes the label, if there is one, facing him?), but would never discuss that in front of him.
