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Y10 friendship drama (boys, if that matters)

8 replies

TresDesolee · 01/11/2019 17:46

DS2 has had a chat with me about a friendship group drama and I thought some of you might have wiser responses than I have...

DS2 is pretty popular at school, is in with the ‘in’ crowd. He’s quite good at sustaining friendships without being needy and he’s quite good at having boundaries etc.

He’s mentioned a couple of times that he’s becoming uncomfortable with the behaviour of one of the other boys in the group. This other boy (we will call him Cedric - apologies to any mothers of Cedrics) seems to create a lot of drama. He’s ‘fallen in love’ with one of the girls in the friendship group and is basically pestering her to death (she’s not interested). DS2 says he drops borderline racist and sexist memes into group chats that include girls and BAME kids - DS says he gets called out on this but that it just makes him ramp up his behaviour (they’ve now created a secret group chat for everyone except Cedric).

Basically, they feel a bit sorry for him (apparently his parents are a bit weird/unreasonable, according to him) and are also slightly being held hostage by the fact that he (Cedric) ramps up the unpleasant behaviour whenever he gets called on it. DS has already been told he’s a ‘white knight’ and a ‘feminist pussy’ (slightly troubling MRA language).

So far so meh, to be honest, but I said to DS today ‘why don’t you just tell him he’s being a jerk’ and it came out that after the last time DS pulled him up on something, Cedric worked on another group of Y10 boys at the school (not part of the same friendship group) and said something (DS doesn’t know what) that has made them all stop speaking to DS. DS asked one of the boys what he’d been told and got told to ‘die’ and ‘just shut up’ (he showed me the messages). DS has asked Cedric what Cedric said to these other boys and Cedric says he can’t remember and that they must have got the wrong end of the stick.

DS isn’t that bothered by all this, he says, but basically Cedric is really fucking annoying me now and I would quite like an evil genius method of getting him to piss off without causing massive fallout for DS.

(Cedric is currently sitting in my lounge along with some other friends of DS using my broadband and drinking my fizzy pop, so i’m posting partly to stop myself going down and asking him straight out what his problem is...)

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LimeTreeGrove · 01/11/2019 18:08

I think your ds needs to break away from this group. They shouldn't be tolerating racist/sexist behaviour and hassling a girl. Hopefully if he does others will follow suit.
The boy sounds like a piece of work.

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TresDesolee · 01/11/2019 18:28

Thanks. To be fair, I think they’re only tolerating it to the same extent DS is - they tell Cedric to stop, he ramps it up, they all tacitly ignore him or go and do something else until he gets bored. I think DS is one of the more vocal objectors but he’s not the only one.

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LimeTreeGrove · 01/11/2019 19:41

They need to stop hanging round with him and inviting him to their house

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TresDesolee · 01/11/2019 21:22

Thanks. You’re right. It’s just that’s not something I have any control over, other than encouraging DS to drop him and face the fallout. (Which I can do.)

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malmontar · 01/11/2019 22:11

They need to drop him. But Y10/11 is when a lot of them mature a lot. Quicker than other obviously. It seems that this cedric boy isn't catching up. Also sounds like cedric might be spending too much time on dodgy 4chan threads. Your son sounds lovely though.

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TreePeepingWatcher · 01/11/2019 22:22

The video on this article may or may not be relevant (Just Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling out Zukerberg over Facebook using dodgy fact checkers)

www.indy100.com/article/white-supremacy-twitter-teenage-radicalisation-children-racism-twitter-9169746

But the rest of the article deals with how teenage boys are being sent and share memes which have subtly racist/homophobic/anti-Semitic/sexist themes, and talks about people calling them out on the sharers and then being told they have no sense of humour or are snowflakes, or in your son's case "feminist pussy"

It has happened with my own son and he did call his mates out on it to be told he had no sense of humour, because of course Nazi jokes are hysterical especially when you cannot claim ignorance because you have covered Nazi Germany in your history class. Sad

Maybe Cedric needs reporting to school, especially over hounding that poor girl. Could she report it? All your son can do is maybe agree with the other friends that they should call Cedric out on his behaviour and question why they should all be friends with someone like that.

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TresDesolee · 01/11/2019 22:39

Yes, there’s definitely something pretty 4Chan-y about a lot of the things he says. I think that stuff is quite widespread and as malmontar says, some of them are more mature and able to sort nonsense from sense than others. But there’s quite a heavy social price to pay for being completely zero tolerance about it, although I admire the kids who are. Hope your DS powered through, treepeeper

The girl who’s being pestered goes to a different school, so it’s complex to report it and DS does currently still believe quite strongly in the ‘no snitching to teachers’ code. Am quite tempted to tell her dad though Grin

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Witchend · 01/11/2019 22:48

Popular threads are often unpopular with HQ.

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