Somewhat Reassuring

When I was walking home from taking the kids to school today, I talked with Amy, my neighbor a little bit. We were both trying to steer clear of saying bad things about Dane and his family, but it seemed to me that she was drawing the same conclusions about them as I had. That is, her boys shouldn't play with little Dane. (I'd noticed her kids were playing less and less out front, but I thought maybe it was only because the older one had been sick for the past week.) Her kids are drawn to all Dane's cool stuff (only child=gets everything he wants). I'm sure Dane has threatened to "not be their friend anymore" if they don't do what he wants and if they are friends with James. Those were popular words from him when I kept trying to allow James to play with him last year. Amy also said that she didn't like the words and phrase her boys, particularly the younger one, had started saying these days. And she insisted that Martin liked James and played better with him. She said he didn't want him playing with an older boy (I think she forgot James is only 2 months younger than Dane -- an easy oversight to make since James does act a lot younger) and would rather he played with someone more Martin's age. While this is comforting to hear, I am still apprehensive about letting James play with Martin. After all, Dane has programmed Martin to scorn James. It was only 3 days ago that I had to chase Martin out of our front yard for spying on James in the backyard through the fence (with Dane sitting on his bike in our driveway) like he's Boo Radley.

Another ironically reassuring thing happened at school last week. Remember my post (which I have since deleted) about my concern on when and how much to reveal to my kids about sex and James' complete indifference to physical privacy? Well, for the second time, James got in trouble for touching someone's bottom. The first time, boys were goofing off and doing it to each other. This time, James touched a quiet little girl's bottom. That's all I know. So he got written up, taken to the principal's office, seen by the counselor and by the behavior specialist. As you probably know, I have hounded the school to get him seen by the counselor (which he does not qualify for individual meetings but has finally been able to be seen in a group for the last two weeks) and I had sought out the behavioral specialist about two weeks ago when I found out there was such a person. The principal called me and I told her that I wanted to make certain this was all documented and I was quite frankly grateful that this has helped shine a light on James' need for help. She acted like this was the first time she'd heard that James had been dismissed from his IEP upon moving to Texas and like she had no idea I'd been trying to get him help from the school. Well, she certainly knows now! Makes me wish James had done something really bad earlier; I guess we are just too good of parents for James to come under the radar. Had James had negligent parents like so many other kids, I'm sure misbehavior would have raised the red flag a long time ago. Hmmm, isn't that why most kids misbehave anyway? To get attention when no one will give them the time of day?