Max is having a rough time of it. The last week or so - pretty much from when he asked about if he'd be going to his school again next year - has been more rocky than usual. He's having a hard time at school, coming home with poor reports for the day. He's having a hard time at home. Man. Yesterday was really bad. I even took him to the park for 45 minutes to run around, playing Aerobe with me (just me - so it was one on one time in addition to exercise) and he was still all in a dither.
Any-who. The point here is that there are some people, kids who've been in foster care especially, who don't know how to say goodbye. Lots of people suffer from this not knowing how to say goodbye thing. An aunt of mine was like that for years. My best friend's brother does that when they visit home and it's time to leave.
What does this not knowing how to say goodbye thing look like? Well, rather than enjoy the last of the time you have, you spend the last bit of time (days, weeks, hours, minutes - depending on the length of visit and attachment) picking fights. You get angry and try to make the person/people you have to say goodbye to angry, as well. It's not sad to say goodbye if you're really mad at the person you're saying goodbye to.
This is so what Max is doing with his teacher as school. I brought it up to him this morning. He was very much in agreement that that was what has been going on. Of course, he likes any good excuse for acting out, so it's hard to know for sure.
We got to school and he asked if I was going to go in and talk to his teacher. "No, hadn't planned on it," I say.
"Aren't you going to tell her why I'm acting like this?"
"No, being mad and picking fights or not is up to you. You have to decide how you want your last couple of days to be."
We'll see how things are when he comes home today.
No comments:
Post a Comment