From: oday@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com (Vicki O'Day)
Subject: Re: 10-year-old ostracized at school
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 17:32:35 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Palo Alto,CA


The ostracism *does* sometimes go away on its own.  There was a 3-month
period when I was 11 when I was ostracized in my neighborhood.  This was
a neighborhood full of zillions of kids who all played together over many
years.  The ostracism started out of the blue and ended suddenly.  I
was so glad to have it over with that I didn't feel inclined to hold a
grudge or ask what had changed.  The adults were equally mystified.  My
advice would be to help your son get through it - think of lots of fun
things for him to do on his own and with you - and see if it doesn't
disappear by the new year.

On a slightly related note, our 3-year-old daughter Emma just moved from
a wondeful, warm infant-toddler center where she was an official big kid
and helper to a preschool where she is one of the three youngest kids.
At infant-toddler centers, new babies and toddlers come at all times of
year, but by preschool, there is a big influx in September, since that's
when older kids leave to go to kindergarten.  This move is hard for all
of us for various reasons (including our brand-new exposure to *really*
big kids and their little tricks), but one problem has been rejection
and hostility towards the new kids by the old-timers.  The teachers
say this is a common pattern - the older kids seem to feel that their
world is being invaded by foreigners, and they don't like it.

Fortunately, in our case, the new kids can hang out together and don't
seem over-bothered by the name-calling and cliquishness.  But we (the
adults) have noticed this whole phenomenon easing off over the last couple
of weeks, as the school adjusts to this new personality mix.  I wonder if
your son might be experiencing a variation on this, a kind of group thing
that started as some kind of stress reaction on the part of other kids and
snowballed, without any of them knowing how it happened or how to stop it.
I think the idea of getting your child together with a few other
carefully-chosen kids might work to soften this reaction.

Another anecdote, about an older kid: when I was starting high school
in a small, semi-rural town, there was a very smart kid who had been
considered a class nerd as long as he'd lived in town.  When he was
14, I (also 14, also a nerd) watched him completely change his image.
It was fascinating - I couldn't figure out everything he was doing,
but he had astonishing success.  He played intramural baseball, and he
began to hang out with a few "jet set" kids and do outside activities
with them.  He stopped being sarcastic in damaging ways, but he
continued to be sarcastic when it wasn't at the expense of anyone in
particular.  He didn't play down his intelligence at all, but he
became as socially energetic as he had previously been intellectually
energetic, without dropping his academic standards.  In a way, he made
himself a mascot of the socially "in" group, but not in a degrading way.
This all worked beautifully, and he became a much less isolated and more
interesting person.  It appeared to be a completely self-motivated makeover.
If your son perceives himself to have any social handicaps, he might want
to consciously work on them when the worst of the ostracism lifts.

Vicki O'Day
oday@hpl.hp.com

Newsgroups: misc.kids