10-year-old boys are jerks.

[Pale Blue Dot]

My son's former best friend told my son today that everyone thinks he's a geek and nobody likes him. Finnfan jr. is a nice kid who would never hurt a fly. It sucks that this has to happen to him. There is little comfort in that it happened to me, it happened to his mom, and we ended up OK in the end.

If you are a 10-year-old boy, or ever were one, I hate your guts. :grr:

[GOPisEvil]

1. Ah, that sucks...

...kids can be awful to one another. But, as long as he's feelin' the love at home, he'll be fine in the end. He'll also probably end up a sensitive and caring adult, like his dad.

[Pale Blue Dot]

5. You can't fool me. I know you were a 10-year-old boy once.

Since you buttered me up, however, I promise to only hate your guts for the rest of the night. :D

[GOPisEvil]

9. Yeah, but starting at age 12, I was like your son.

:(

[Pale Blue Dot]

11. You had red hair and were addicted to American Idol?

:-( OK, I don't hate you. Come join the loser's club with my son and I. It's the cool thing to do. :D

[GOPisEvil]

12. Woohoo!!! A club!

:D

[Maddy McCall]

2. Always be his port in the storm...

he'll make it through it. Kids can be brutal. As long as he has you to provide self-confidence to him, he'll make it through it ok.

It seems that around ten Y. O. is always when the ugliness starts. Junior high is even worse, sad to say. :(

[Pale Blue Dot]

7. I've been waiting for this

He is a little geeky, and he's a very nice, kind of prudish kid. I think only the fact that he's freakishly tall for his age kept this from happening sooner.

He's not willing to give up his individuality to be part of the crowd, so that's good. It's still a very hard thing to go through, and I wish I could make it better for him.

[Maddy McCall]

14. I awaited the same thing with my son.

He's heavy--not fat but a really BIG boy for his age, and he was picked on about his size. But he got a reputation of backing the bullies down if he caught them picking on little kids, so he was liked by kids who saw him as a kind of hero. (I have never been as proud of him as I was the day the school principal called to tell me that MMjr. had been in a fight. He had pulled three big white kids off of a little black kid on the playground--they were beating up the black kid--and then he backed down the three bullies.)

But the mean kids are really mean, and they don't care about his kind heart or his concern or love for people. They just care about what they see on the outside that makes him different from them, and then the rag him about it. And it didn't help that he is liberal in his point of view, in a very conservative school.

But, as you said, and it's the best way to be: As long as he can resist the pressure to be like everyone else, he will be a shining star.

Can you take him out for pizza or to a movie or something, just a dad-and-son "guy night" to kind of let him know that you're his buddy, no matter what?

You sound like a good, supportive Dad, and your son is fortunate to have a parent who is more concerned about his son's well-being than forcing him to fit in. I see that so often--parents living vicariously through their children--forcing kids to be what they themselves could not be. Allowing and encouraging your son to be his own person, even though that may be painful at times for him, is the best that you can do. Oh, and loving him, of course.

[Shine]

3. Some of them can be, that's for sure.

My son is 12 now and it has brought me to tears sometimes the way they treat each other. It breaks my heart that our little boys are growing up, having to be so disconnected from their sensitive side, their feelings, in order to be considered "cool".

There are a couple of great books dealing with this subject matter that I'd recommend:

Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of our Boys

Real Boys: Rescuing our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood

Hang in there, it aint' easy raising kids these days. My best to you...
:hi:

[AlCzervik]

4. thats sucky and i'm glad you're there for him. 10 year old girls can be

quite horrible as well, very catty and cliquey and just plain nasty.

[pokerfan]

15. You beat me to it

Thank god little girls aren't that way.

[maxsolomon]

6. children are cruel

they shun everything that is different; disabilities as common as glasses, the aged, oddly textured food, etc. they isolate & marginalize the weakest among them without realizing their malice. they lash out at friends out of fear, revenge, impulse. girls will do it just as surely as boys. in a darwinian way, they are perfect barometers of 'normality'.

it makes sense, too; they are the offspring of the most brutal & horrible of the great apes, and this cruelty has to be a remnant of a survival mechanism.

anyway, despite all this, and the fact that something hidden likely prompted that outburst, that kid should fuck off.

-former 10 year old who got bullied for myopia & playing the violin

[Jade Fox]

8. Did you tell your son that?

I mean that it happened to you too. Kids are often amazed and relieved to hear their parents went through the same crap they are experiencing. Don't assume he knows you did. :)

[Pale Blue Dot]

10. Yeah, I did.

I think it spoiled his impression of me as a super-cool, handsome, worldly kind of guy. :D

[sakabatou]

13. I kinda excepted being a geek, though I prefer otaku

[Burma Jones]

16. In The Good Old Days, 10 year old Boys just beat each other up

and the girls psychologically tortured each other to the point of eating disorders.......

[SOteric]

17. I'm sure they said the same thing

to Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Stephen Jobs and Larry Ellison.

And here they are, laughing all the way to their Swiss Bank Accounts and Cayman Islands Holding Companies. :hi:

[philosophie_en_rose]

18. Finnfan Jr. will win in the end.

Eventually, he'll look back on that kid and realize that it doesn't matter what that kid thought. I'm sorry that he lost a friend, though. Is there a chance that the kid will apologize and make up with Finn Jr.?

[Robb]

19. I concur

A friend of mine (cough) went to take some nice "kids playing in the snow" pictures for the local shitrag newspaper. Kids had MLK-day off school, and a bunch were sledding.

And I quote:

"Want to have your picture in the paper?"

"Will you give us each five bucks?"

:eyes:

[KitchenWitch]

20. I was never a 10 year old boy

but I am inclined to agree with you...

[khashka]

21. Actually there is comfort in that

it happened to you and his mom and that you ended up OK. I'm sure he looks up to you - you're his Dad!

What I remember from that time is a crushing sense of being alone and no one understanding. So tell him about your experience - there is comfort there (for him not you). He's probably feeling very alone and very small - show him it doesn't have to be that way. That you can still be triumphant. He needs that and you can give it to him.

Khash.