What I am learning about my 8 year old

Nic confuses as much as he amazes.

He is a scary bright kid, with a wicked sense of humor, and the commentary he makes sounds precocious, but more often than not, it's said innocently--but people think he's a smartass. (I had the same problem)

We've had a lot of good here the last few days. He and G did great at a wedding on Saturday, birthday party on Sunday, and his day yesterday--good overall, bad in other parts....but even the little triumphs are big:

He came off the bus and wanted to play with the twins across the street. I'm finding now that he wants to play outside now, and the main reason is that now that Capri2's kids have left for the shore for the summer, it's 'safe' for him to come out and play. The neighborhood pecking order has changed--at least for a little while. We'll take that.

I'm also discovering how mean Perky's kids are. Nic went out to play with them, and they were really mean to one another--infinitely meaner than my kids are to one another, even when they are fighting. Nic thought they were joking--until perfect son made perfect daughter cry and run into the house. And then he told son off for being so mean.

Both kids went in. They came out again and called the twins over when my kids came in for dinner. And I wonder why I am having anger issues. But anyway.

We went to the pool for a bit after we got G, and both boys had kids to hang out with. I should say here that we were met with suspicion, since although this is a township pool and we are members of the township, we were the only white people there. However, Nic found one of his classmates and hung out with him--until the kid realized he could totally outswim my boy, who doesn't even get his head wet.

Then Nic stuck his face in the water. Any one who has ever had a kid who refused to get their head wet should realize how huge this is. And he did it several times.
So we have good here, my boys socializing, swimming, Nic getting more adventurous, until he went to the men's room to get changed. He came running out--jaybird--waving towel, suit, clothes yelling that he needed to show me something he found in the locker room.....

Two pennies.

I went ballistic and told him that if he EVER streaked like that again he'd lose his computer for two months. (as it is, he lost it for the rest of the week).

He wanted to go to the community center library (two blocks from the pool) and get some books out. We did, and he wanted to go check out the playground. That was fine until I realized he discovered some used birthday cake in a mini eating area and was eating it. "The rat needs to stop eating junk food," he said.

I went ballistic again, cursing Charlotte's Web and the county fair wherein Templeton gorges himself on the spoils of the fair--because guess who he thought he was? He lost video privileges and was reminded the eating found food could kill him.

(I think he still thinks he's a rat, but anyway).

So we came in from that excursion and he saw the neighbor kids, wanted to play, and that was okay. So what I've learned about Nic yesterday:

1) Peer pressure is an effective way to move him forward
2) He hates conflict and would rather think people are joking around than actually being mean to one another
3) He has the emotional maturity of a four year old in that he still thinks that whatever he sees in videos directly translates to real life
4) He is really motivated to have friends but still needs a lot of coaching from the sidelines. (Borne out by the fact that I had to call him over at the pool a few times and tell him to stop yelling for people to stop splashing--it's a pool and people will think you are WEIRD if you yell that. He stopped. )

So we will continue to push forward, get out as much as we can, get together with friends as often as we can, and I will continue to look for good safe opportunities for Nic to practice being a friend. It's hard work, but anything worth doing is never easy.