On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:19:06 EDT, "Dawn"
wrote:


Scott L wrote:
Rosalie B. wrote:
I think you are asking a lot to have him do it himself. This is just
a first thought but...

Agreed. To stand up to a peer is hard.

Absolutely -- but don't we need to coach our kids to some extent to
help them learn these skills so that they can stand up later, when the
stakes are higher and we're not nearby? I guess that's what I'm
looking for, too. In addition to the excellent practical idea of having
him signal that he needs us to intervene, how can we start helping him
learn how to be a little more assertive with his own values?

Does he also have difficulty speaking up when it's not your rule that
his friends are pushing, but his property or his preferences? Like,
oh, what if he had a partly finished craft project lying around when
his friends came over to watch TV, and his friends started tinkering
with the craft project and wrecking it? Or the friends don't listen
to his ideas of what to do? What I remember from observing our kids
was that they were more receptive to our help with that kind of
trouble, complaining about the friend afterwards at the dinner table
and talking with us about different ways to say no, redirect the
friend, avoid the temptation by keeping the sculpture in their
bedrooms or whatever.

When it was a situation of "your friends are breaking our rules and
you aren't enforcing the rules", or other right/wrong issues like
friends using degrading language or hitting people, those discussions
were more prone to breaking down into defensiveness. Even now, when
our 21yo is home, there are sometimes issues like that with his
visiting friends, like the one who walks in to the house without
knocking and waiting to be admitted, or the ones who forget that sound
travels up the stairs late at night. Anyway, it's still sometimes
easier for me to speak to the friends directly than to remind our son
to do it.

Someone (I think it was you, but I'm not sure) wrote on m.k.m several
years ago about the sometimes-undervalued importance of having a
parent around home in the after-school time for middle-schoolers.
This kind of challenge is a good example - the parents who are around
with their ears open get a kind of heads-up before big problems
develop.

Louise
--
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