Life is Change, and Life is Good

[lawnrrd]

The boy is back home from summer camp, and he's brought back some interesting vocabulary, mannerisms, and questions. I'm trying not to be too strict for now, but whenever it comes up, I nonetheless make clear that he's being inappropriate.

As for me, now that he's back home, I'm spending more time at home, too. I'm happy to see him and to have him home, but it does mean dialing back, for a little while, on some of the things that have made this the best summer of my adult life. But life is about change, and his being here is also part of dialing those things back up for good.

Comments

[penpusher.livejournal.com]

Inappropriate?

I guess I remember coming home from summer camp one year. It was the year I hit puberty, actually. I think my mom just didn't want to deal with it so she wanted me to learn and return.

These "rites of passage" are definitely not easy for anyone involved.

[lawnrrd]

My son is almost eight, so we're not dealing with anything like puberty. But yesterday while frustrated with part of a video game, he was cursing under his breath, continuously and probably unconsciously. He's also asking what some things mean, the least coarse of which is probably "sixty-nine".

I will impose and enforce boundaries, and I expect to be calm and rational about it most of the time, but I worry. Not because saying certain words is "bad" in some inherent sense, but because he lacks perspective and context to understand what various words and acts are, what they mean and entail. And I see in that the possibility that someone will get hurt, possibly (but not necessarily) him.

[ivy]

I think everyone goes through that phase, though, of knowing that some things are risky and taboo without actually understanding them. (And gets defensive about not actually understanding them, though you really can't until the hormones kick in some years later and you have some experience.) My parents got really weird about that, so I did what everyone in my situation did as a ten year old... I learned from my peers instead. So I agree that he'll probably stumble socially a time or two as he figures it out, but I don't think that's terrible, it's just human. I hesitate to give advice on parenting, because hahaha yeah, but I do remember what would have been helpful to me as a child. I think calm and rational explanations with no shaming but an awareness of context would have worked well for me. Best of luck with it!

[lawnrrd]

Thanks for the good wishes. Honestly, I'm not so worried about taboos as such as I am about him inappropriately touching someone else or, for that matter, just creeping out his playmates or their parents.

I try to impress on him the need to respect others' space, including their bodies, and I'm confident that he doesn't want to hurt anyone—and would in fact try hard not to hurt anyone—but kids his age are often not so good about boundaries to begin with. I worry that one of his peers will talk him into something he knows he shouldn't do. I worry that he'll get caught up in a culture that often underreacts to adults' assaults and tries to compensate by overreacting to kids' mistakes. I worry that, no matter what he intends, he may nonetheless hurt someone.

Basically, I worry. That's what parents do.

[bravenewworld.livejournal.com]

I remember my brother (who was 9 or 10 at the time) coming home from sleep away baseball camp in the mid 90s. The biggest news he had to report to our family was that his camp counselor had shown them all a porn video entitled Ramboner. I guess he had a good summer that year but my parents were a little mortified.