teasing - poor ds,will it always be like this?- bit long....[sad]

[MaryAnnSingleton]

I'm getting a bit weary of hearing that ds has been teased by boys at school for being 'scared of everything' - ds is 10 and is a quiet, gentle and thoughtful boy, not a running around boistrous boy in any sense. He is content in his own company but will play and share with others quite happily,though avoids ball games and anything too rowdy - the reason being is that he does have difficulties in catching,throwing,some balancing,etc and can't judge where balls,people are coming from very well - all this is and has been addressed by the school sand he has ongoing Occupational Therapy - and things are definitely improving, but it does mean that he rules himself out of joining in with such activities. (he's scared of animals too,for same reasons - they move unpredictably or quickly and he doesn't feel comfortable ) I know about the school's bullying policy etc and I don't believe this is as severe as bullying -it's just irritating and annoying for him and makes me .
I reaffirm every time how good/clever/fab he is and he is quite self assured and underneath a gentle exterior I know he is quite steely and if pushed too far might snap back but if he does stand up for himself he tends to feel guilty and that he's doing something bad. He even apologised to a boy who had said some nasty things to him because he felt he'd answered back innapropriately (yhe boy told him he would kill him the next day so ds answered with 'I wish you'd never been born' - which I can't blame him for, but explained that maybe he might have expressed himself differently. Anyway, he was very upset that he'd spoken back like that ! Sorry, this has got very long,but I wanted to get it off my chest !

ok Boco - I'll email you now !!

I think the choir will be good. I'd like to find something similar for ds (he's 5) who is a wanna be alpha male, but def not cut for the football field as well.

Ah but franca, I used to think that about ds1 who is small and bespectacled and bookish. He's about to be 10 and has suddenly started playing rugby. I don't know who is more astonished, me or him.
He plays THREE times a week fgs.

Consistency. That's what children lack of. We want them to be predictable and they aren't. I like bespectacled children. I was one of them.

Also Maryann, I was thinking, that whilst it's very, very hard to mother these children, they are all probably going to end up as interesting people because they stand a little on the outside of things and think a little differently. I think this because I was an outsider, and I married an outsider - who is now a writer - and we're both marvellous.

Also his response was good and completely appropriate, you know that right?

sob ! thank you ahundredtimes ! I know he'll be something special -and he is like his dad who was a bit of an outsider and is a writer !! I would never have my boy any other way,despite difficulties, I love the way he is an individual !

Hurrah for us outsiderish, creative, interesting folk. I think they just need shoring up and rooting at home, then they can go out into the world confident in themselves. and write devastating novels about the cruelty of boys who say things like 'I'm going to kill you tomorrow.'

We will win in the end. Just you wait and see.

My dd (5) has written her first story. The beginning sounds a bit familiar so doing know if she plagiarised it.. but it goes

'Only the moon was watching when they left, only the moon was watching when they arrived, the rumbling pirate girls on their housboat. When they arrived on the island, all was still and silent, except for the boys in the trees who made noises like the wind to scare them. But nothing could scare the rumbling pirate girls. The end.

She has read it to me 200 times, i know it word for word.

this is such a lovely thread! Your ds sounds just wonderful MaryAnn. Does he do any music? Maybe music and then joining in a band would be nice for him?
My dd is very bookish, bad at sports, very artistic and imaginative, and a bit of an outsider, but she seems happy on the whole and I think she is fabulous.
All these lovely outsiders will turn into fascinating lovable grown ups

Oh my goodness, how utterly marvellous are the rumbling Pirates. I have this on the wall in my study because I love it so much. Is written by ds2

'the sun is shining over the deck and the water is blue and cold, it's waving over the deck like it's about to splash. There are orange, shiney, slippery, smooth fish in the water. The captain is in his soft, smooth, comfortable walrus skin deckchair, moving the wheel to and fro.
There is a lot of food, it smells like roses, it looks like you want to eat it. The food is orange and pink and yellow and blue and green and turquoise. The food is shaped like hexagons.
There are scary, quick, nasty horrible robbers below deck strangling people on the ship.
The End'

DS2 does love his adjectives doesn't he?

Lolol, i love that story - it's starts out hypnotically relaxing and soothing - and ends with mass murder. Why is the captain relaxing in his chair with all the carnage below?

I wonder why dds pirate girls rumble. When she tells it, she puts on a very eerie and low voice, it's very funny. I love children's stories - that would be a good job, just writing stories with children. And drawing with them. Is that a job?

I liked the boys in the trees who made noises like the wind to scare the rumbling pirate girls.

I think the captain is unaware of the carnage below, but I'm not sure. Perhaps he can't get out of his walrus-skin deckchair? Haha.

NO Boco, YOU write the story and illustrate them. Oh go on, write a story about the Rumbling Pirate Girls. DD would eat that up like a shot.

WOW ! these are fantastic stories - rumbling pirate girls and walrus skin deckchairs - I can just see them all - our children are obviously geniuses !
Frogprincess - he loves music but doesn't play anything (coordination not good for trickly things - we tried drum lessons which wasn't suitable and he did the recorder in yr 2, but found it too fiddly) Might try keyboards! He sings his own songs and makes up imaginary groups and designs cd covers for them - the names he gives them are hysterical !

Hi MAS, just found this!

Please don't worry about your ds. The response he gives those teasing him are fine. He is good at standing up for himself.

It is hard, being on the outside looking in. It must be especially hard being left behind after your playground buddy leaves for another school.
My ds is also on the outside looking in. He has one best friend (who was new to the school last year) with whom he spends all his time in the playground making up silly walks whilst everyone else plays football. (the one whose mum invited me to Elevenses ) However, this boy is going to private school in a years' time, so ds will be left behind

Does your ds get on well with girls? I found ds (because he is not a roughy toughy boy) gets on much better with the girls. So I invited one or two of the girls from his class for tea and he has struck up lovely friendships with them. In fact he was telling me today that him and 3 girls sat in the corner of the playground playing with little toy animals, making up stories. It does not bother him that he is the only boy playing with girls. I am waiting for him to be teased for it, or for another boy to call him 'big girl' or something equally charming, but for now ds is happy.
Would that be an option for your ds?

All in all, your ds looks gorgeous and sounds like a fantastic boy. And I know who I would rather meet once grown up, the interesting quiet one, NOT the footy yob!

By the way, ds had to have OT for a very mobile thumb, and 'loose wrists' to help him hold and control a pencil.
He still has trouble catching a ball, and has two left feet at football.
But, he is very good at playing golf. I think it is because the ball lays still when you hit it, so he can take his time, line up his shot etc. When a ball is moving he cannot connect with it at all. That has done wonders for his confidence and gave him some cred with his class mates

Does your ds still do Cubs? I find ds meets with lots of likeminded boys in beavers and now cubs (the cool dudes and footballers around here seem to turn their noses up at scouting) so ds is in his element when he goes there!

Sorry, I probably could have put this on our other thread, I hope this finds you.

thank you too hippipotami ! so your ds has a mobile thumb too ! No, ds didn't want to go on to cubs after Beavers - he left Beavers when we moved and was coming up to 8 anyway -golf sounds good though - I think they had a golf taster session at school last term as part of the healthy schools initiative. As for girls - he has a few friends who are girls who he's known for years but they are all back in London - so it's great when he sees them, but not much help for daily socialising. The girls in his year I think are all approaching that difficult time when they prob. don't want boys around (10-11) - though having said that he was friendly last term with a yr 6 girl in his break dancing class (I forgot to mention the break dancing - ds not v good at all the athletic stuff but enjoys the other bits)

Ds loves dancing too - he had a little dancing part in last years Christmas play, but surprise surprise, one of the extremely athletic boys teased ds for that! (Out of 13 Y3 children taking part, only 1 was a boy, that was ds)

Luckily, some of the boys from cubs go to ds's school, so he has some friends at school. These boys are quite adaptable though and play football at breaktime at school, so of not much use to ds

I don't know what ds's exact 'diagnosis' was, but all through infant school he saw the SEN lady once a week who did hand and wrist strengthening exercises with him as his pen control was so weak. Definately a very moveable thumb and also 'loose wrists'. She performed miracles with him because now in Y4 he is one of the neatest writers, not bad considering he is a boy and lefthanded!
(I like that SEN woman very much, and her beautiful, clever, popular, sporty dd plays with ds sometimes at playtime, so I doubly like them )

ds is 9 and you could so easily be writing about him. He is probably dyspraxic(about 1 in 20 are , more boys than girls) as he has motor coordination , planning issues etc He however loves Rock climbing, it is something he can control for himself and gives him self confidence so don't rule that and similar activities, like sailing, out. In fact at his 8th b'day party at a lcoal climbing wall he excelled and some of the more brash boys found it harder. Swimming he finds hard as he has hyperflexible arm joints on top of poor coordination but he enjoys it even though he is well off his peer group at school (high achieving swimming school). He is going on an otudoor pursuits type weekend very soon and hopefully it will give him an opportunity to silence those who have teased him at team sports.

oh and he has just taken up tenor horn and is doing well

oh that sounds great LISZ - climbing has been mentioned twice now, so might think about that,though ds would be anxious about the idea of climbing anywhere !
As for swimming, ds lacks technique,in that he finds moving his arms fully for crawl and back stroke quite hard,plus the coordination required - but he does persevere and absolutely loves it - he is jumping in quite happily and kind of learning the first steps towards diving, such a change from a year ago when he would have been quite panicky out of his depth.
Hippipotami - ds had lots of hand exercises and had to pick marbles out of this stiff putty ! His handwriting is really good now. I'm left handed as is dh, but ds right handed - I struggled with writing as a child and wrote letters back to front until I was about 8 or so...

Hi MAS!

Your poor poor ds - he doesn't deserve this and it must be heartbreaking for you. Why are children so cruel? Actually, its not just children, but as adults we can work out ways to cope, whereas fro children it really can seem like the end of the world.

I was (and still am!) very unsporty at school and took my fair share of flack. School sports didn't help either because they focussed so much on the sports achievers and ignored those who tried hard but were less able. It really knocked my confidence, and I'm often surprised now how much I enjoy something now the pressure is off. Tennis and trampolining were sports I got into at uni. I enjoyed them for having fun, not for being the best.

When I look at my friends now, many of them are very similar to me, and I recognise that I just didn't find the right friends at school who were on my wavelength. There was nothing wrong with me, just that I was different. I did a lot of activities outside school, drama, singing, church, art, and I lived for those, rather than time spent in school.

Hopefully your ds will find some others like himself. Hopefully choir will help. Are there any other after school activities which take his fancy? Secondary next year might offer more opportunities too. It sounds like you are doing all the right things though, hard though it is at the moment...

I love the stories too! Can't wait for dd to start, she seems to have a very vivid imagination!!!

BTW - your ds response was spot on! Maybe not what he 'should' say, but certainly no worse than anything said to him I'm sure! Hopefully he wont beat himself up about it too much

Thinking of you...

hotcross - that is so nice, thank you - I'm overwhelmed by how kind everyone is and it's helped a lot to post and say how I feel - I'm sure it'll be ok, but I just want to protect him from unkindness ! I quite enjoyed sport at school,being quite competitive - wasn't brilliant at anything,except maybe 800 metres and good at swimming and netball. I think we've exhausted all the after school stuff that's available and that he'd like to do.
Just back from bookgroup which was fun,despite my not having finished the book- everyone else had !
Hippipotami - no house envy but clothes envy today - why does everyone look great ??
We had wine and guacamole an d nuts and crisps...
I do hope this thread carries on - I really look forward to hearing from you two !

uh - I meant the Elevenses thread, but this one has been fantastic too!

I'm confused too!!! Now I really am off to bed Hope ds (and you) have a better rest of the week.

Dyspraxia awareness week 24 - 30 Sep

I am bumping up as I have just found a link to www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk

also details of local support groups call
01462 454986 (weekdays 10am - 1pm)

thanks wotzknot !