Getting dragged in by classmates

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Hello,

For the second time, my 8 yr old is getting dragged in a little 'school situation'. He just skipped a year and is in a mainstream school with lots of gifted kids, only few of them on the spectrum. He's has a special Ed teacher for one hour a week, the school is pretty good. School urged me to make him skip a grade in January. I had some worries, but they said they were going to follow him closely, which they do to their abilities. He made friends with a NT kid in his class, who also skipped a year. Over the past weeks, he came home with 'new words' that were all sexually charged. I was already anticipating a talk with the parents, but I didn't find the right way to do it. He went for a play date to the kid's house, and came home telling me they looked up 'stuff' on the internet. Apparently, the parents let them surf the web on their own, which would never happen at my place.

Later, I got a call from the dad, telling me they found out about the browsing, and he said 'this was the first time they ever encountered this'.
I was completely honest, telling them I knew about this since my kid simply lacks the ability to make the distinction between what is better kept private and what not. I even showed them the notes I found that they wrote to each other. I said I think my son has a responsibility in his own behavior, but I urged them not to tell their kid what I shared with hem, since I don't want their friendship to be ruined because of my kid's honesty.

So the parents confronted the kid and emailed me back. Their kid owned up to some of the stuff, but they said 'it's probably the two of them stirring each other'. Which is bull. My son never even was remotely interested in sex until he befriended the other boy. Not that there's anything wrong with curiosity, but it aches to read that all of a sudden, this is a 'shared interest' in their eyes, while their kid is the one talking about sex all the time. I mean, the kid is 8 and talks about blowjobs! Ugh.

I talked to my son, asked him if he had any questions, took out my anatomy books and answered them all. I told him -again- that it is never ok to browse the internet without adult supervision, even at someone else's place. But I see he finds it hard to accept the fact that other kids do stuff he's not allowed to do, and chooses peers over my guidelines. Which is in a way good, because he's being social, but then again, not so good if the other kids are up to no good. And yes, I am strict. In Belgium, there's this kind of new 'vibe' where parents just let the kids do whatever, and as much as I want to be for it, I just can't, because frankly, I think it's just nicely disguised lazyness. Feel free to disagree, I know I'm a bit strict in that sense.

As I said, it's great that he found a friend so quickly. But first of all, I don't want my kid to be even partially blamed for their kid's behavior, and second: I know this will happen again. My son lacks the intrinsic social skills to know what he can and can't do, he's always copying the popular kid-which enables him to make friends, but then finds himself in trouble. I would really like your input on this, since I know this will be a recurring problem. And to be honest, I really feel like taking his friend aside for a minute and telling him to stop dragging my kid down. Which I shouldn't, I know. I just find it hard to deal with NT parents. They're always so... vague.

I don't have time to go into detail right now, but please be very, very careful. I don't know what things are like in Belgium, but in the US do/say the wrong thing to the wrong person and it will be trouble, even if the kid didn't really understand what he was saying/doing. When my son was older than your's, he got "caught" saying some sexual innuendos to another little girl and it caused a big problem. I say "caught" because he readily admitted to it because he didn't understand what he was saying.

Some of my son's friends come from families that don't appear to hold the same values that we do in our family. What I have always told my son was that it was OK for him to be their friends, but that as soon as he started behaving in a way that I don't approve of, that is it. The friendship is over. I know that seems old-fashioned or controlling, but when your kid has social issues, I think it is the parent's responsibility to safeguard their kids from some things. People can disagree with me all they want, but I know what values I have and I know what values I am teaching my kids to have. Once they are no longer under my roof, they will do as they please. That means I have from now until then to give them a solid foundation. That sounds much more militant than I really am, but I take certain things very seriously. I think kids who have a hard time seeing and navigating the "gray" need our help, and sometimes that means making things very black and white.

FWIW, my daughter is 9 and in 4th grade. She would have no idea what a blowjob is and would be disgusted if someone told her. I understand the importance of kids having friends, but I would be extra cautious around this boy, and I would question how he knows what a blowjob is. At any rate, I would have this friend come to your house to play and I would probably not let my kid go to the other kid's house. He doesn't appear to be able to "do what's right" outside of your supervision at this point, and there appears to be inadequate supervision at the other house.

I would have a talk to him about self respect. Copy cats often put the desire to be liked above respect for themselves and their own personal values, and while this may temporarily win them "friends", humans actually have a particular disdain for those who do not respect themselves....because "If you do whatever I say, how do I know you won't do whatever my enemy says?" So people do not actually form any loyalty to those who do not respect themselves and your son gets stuck holding the gun while everyone else runs away.

I would tell him that it's ok for people not to like him if he stands his ground on right and wrong because they are the wrong kind of people to hang out with. If he respects himself, he will weed out the bad people and be left with the friends with a level of integrity similar to his own.

Thanks for your replies.

InthisTogether, I so agree with what you're saying. The only thing is, I don't know how to 'control' what goes on in school, even less so in recess. I can tell my kid to play with other kids, but I know that will have close to no effect.

I am afraid that he's the perfect kid to drag into something and then put the blame on him, even partially. That's why I am so unbelievably angry.

Shouldn't I say anything to the parents? I have plenty of things to say, frankly, but I am a bit, well, frank. I'm afraid it will make relationships tense. And more importantly, this will happen again. I feel like I need a 'broader' strategy. I don't want him to end up a teenager with no friends, and I'm sure there will be plenty of reasons for me to frown upon the friend's behavior.

Chronos, you make a lot of sense; the only thing is I don't know how to make conceptual ideas tangible to him.

I'm 'one of those parents' who allows my child to browse the internet rather freely and without adult supervision. He is 12, however, and he didn't have as much freedom when he was eight. My one rule is no porn in my house, which is a respect thing that I demand due to both my personal belief systems and the fact that my kid is a kid and porn isn't a way to learn about sexuality or sex.

I am autistic and so is my son. We speak very freely and openly with one another. He knows things from the internet that I didn't even know about until I was well into my 20s. We talk openly about everything he sees online, and he comes to me almost immediately when he sees something 'weird'. He sees a deal of 'weird' as he participates in Steam community and there are plenty of folks on there I wouldn't want him socialising with in real life.

It's tough to come to this but we're living in a very different age to our kids. We've got to come to terms with that in our own way, and in a way that works for our family.

Can I ask why you feel the need to control your son's exposure even when he isn't with you? Would it not be better to establish an honest dialogue where you are his helper rather than his controller? You can't control who he makes friends with, but you can establish a dialogue with him where you are able to help him deal with the ramifications of his friendships. It sounds like you have a good relationship, and the control issues might spoil that in the long run. For my family, I prefer to have discussions about things that are uncomfortable for me rather than try to control situations my son might experience. I believe that avoiding 'controlling' all aspects of his life will enable him to function better as an adult. I hope I'm right about that.

The only way I have found to "control" for it is to have my son talk to me about the things he is exposed to at school. We then talk about why certain ideas are not good ones or why certain things are bad. We talk about why I believe the things I do, and why I want him to believe the same things. We talk about how different families have different values and for certain things (ex: cursing, particularly the F-bomb) he shouldn't judge people for not having the same values, but that "not judging" does not mean "do the same thing." We talk about respecting oneself and respecting other people. We talk about things like what it means to spread rumors, how they can hurt people, etc. I often have to graphically explain to him what certain words and phrases mean because he doesn't know, and he uses them without understanding what he is saying. It embarrasses him a great deal, but he would rather be embarrassed in front of me than to go around saying crude things without realizing he is saying it. He is rather proper that way and I appreciate that about him.




Unfortunately, this is very true. I believe that typical kids with a tendency to bully or the need to control another kid find our kids like heat seeking missiles. They read their naivete, their gullibility, and their eagerness to get along and they take advantage of it. As I mentioned before, my son has already suffered the consequences of doing things other kids told him to do, without having any real understanding of what he was doing. It wasn't until he was 11 that he was able to see that he had been duped and became more wary of kids that he doesn't know well. Whenever there is a new kid in the group, he checks with me frequently about what the kid is saying/doing to make sure he understands. One of the things that I am so happy about with my son is that he recognizes his social deficits and he knows that I understand these things better than he does, so he asks me. I recognize I am lucky to have that kind of relationship with a teenaged son. Your son is young enough that you can work to develop one, too.



At this point, I would not. I would invite the kid to come to my house and decline invitations to have your son go over there. The parents will likely figure it out. I would also try to spend some time with the parents. It is quite possible that they have no idea what is really going on and that if they did, they would be putting a stop to it. Some people have an alarming amount of trust in their kids. Either that or they are naive and think that things happen to "other people's kids" and not theirs. For as much as I do not like to socialize with other people, I do make it a point to at least somewhat know the parents of the friends my kids are hanging out with. Without knowing them at least a little, you saying something to them would not likely help. I have found that some parents are way too permissive for my tastes and allow their kids to be exposed to things that I do not feel are developmentally appropriate. I steer my kids away from their kids. That may sound awful to some, but parents are responsible for their kids' moral and ethical development and I do not need to encourage my kid to expose him/herself to things that go against what I am trying to instill.

I have found with both of my kids, regardless of what I am teaching them, I have to give them the rationale behind it. I can't just say "because I say so" or any version of that. Once they understand and embrace the reason behind whatever it is, they tend to stick to it rather closely, which is a benefit of their "rule following Aspieness." If I had a similar issue, I might try saying "In our family, sex and talking about sex is a private thing. It can be seen as rude or vulgar to discuss it in public. Some people may think it is funny or cool, but other people may find it disturbing. It is more important to be respectful than to be cool." I would repeat that whenever the topic came up and I would hope they would start to internalize it.

This.
Letting kids do whatever they want is not parenting. It's kind of the opposite, in fact.

Sure, I understand. But then there's this:


Which is why I feel the need to have at least some control over what goes on somewhere else but home. And this sin't the first time. I just don't want him getting suspended or yelled at by a teacher because he's imitating his friend.



I actually do know the parents a bit. Which is why I did email them, I just didn't want to wait. I told them everything I knew and I also emailed his special Ed teacher. I don't want this to come bite him in the butt later. This way, everything is in the open. Since the dad said 'he was going to be on guard', and his kid hadn't been honest, ànd the dad concluded it was 'a dynamic between them', I just couldn't say nothing. I was very polite, praised his kid for befriending my kid, made sure there was no blame game, but I did say that I would do some more digging if I were him. Kids don't talk about blow jobs
out of nothing, and I've heard the word 'rape' as well (didn't tell him that, though). Even if his kid is unaware of the gravity of this language, the parents should now, I think.



That's such great advice. Thanks so much, InthisTogether!

You're welcome

Is it possible they learned these words from South Park or shows like that? When I was about that age South Park just came out and all the kids were watching it. Especially the main character Cartman uses strong language and is pretty much a stereotype of the worst child ever. South Park is still on tv (at least in the Netherlands) and there is probably lots of it on youtube as well. Even though the show is aimed at adults I can see why kids would find it hilarious.

Not my kid .
He doesn't like tv. He only plays games that I pre-approve. There is some mild language in some of his comics, but nothing like this.

Ironically, teachers told me a couple of months ago that 'Casper and Hobbes is for grown ups and I might consider giving him other comics'.
I browsed through the more popular commercial comics available and found nothing but mindnumbing, sexist and violent stuff.

Ugh. I hate these things. People don't understand us, are quick to judge us, while we're actually a lot less permissive than the 'average' NT person and have a more finetuned moral compass. Generalizing, I know. Still. If I ever find that other planet, I'm packing my bags.

If you let your Aspie kid watch shows and play games that other kids play, then when they act out other people will say it's because you're too permissive. If you don't let them watch those shows and play those games, then people will say your kid acts out because you coddle them and don't let them experience the world.
You just can't win for trying.

I don't think it is too weird for a young boy to interested in these things, something that is held up as so taboo and hidden from them is obviously going to arise curiosity. I think it is pretty normal and harmless, I think reacting so negatively and possibly jeopardizing their friendship is probably the worst thing you can do and next time they'll know they can't talk to you and won't feel comfortable sharing whatever in fear of retribution. They're going to start keeping secrets which is also normal but I think being open and having a dialogue is better if your hope is to guide them to best of your abilities. Your child is still an individual, even on the spectrum it is still the same and you can't "control" everything they say/think/or do. They'll make mistakes, they'll do things you don't want them to do, they'll think things you don't want them to think, this is all part of growing up.

I can tell you personally at age 8, I didn't need convincing to be interested in any of this stuff as I was a naturally curious boy who wasn't stupid or totally ignorant of the world around me. I looked at dirty mags, my parents or my friend's parents or something we found. I didn't know what to do with it or anything but I did know I wasn't suppose to be looking at it. My parents probably thought of me similarly as this relatively innocent perfect kid, they didn't even think I was capable of lying so I was more than cognizant enough to know not to tell my parents what some kid on the playground told me. This was also around the same age I started having crushes on girls, its just growing up.

Sadly, if you look back through my old posts, I experienced almost exactly the same thing with my son. Unfortunately (and this is the reason you sometimes need to control what your kids do even in other people's houses) I found out about it because after all the internet-youtube-watching, they decided to text sexually explicit words to a girl that the other boy liked, but who clearly preferred my son (she had given him her cell phone number.) We had started to be suspicious when my son began scripting YouTube videos that he wasn't allowed to watch that contained a lot of profanity. He was 11 or 12 at the time.

I know it wasn't my son's idea because the collections of words they came up with to use were just not words it would have occured to my son to put together. I know he was no innocent and knew it was bad, but the phrases were not ones he would have used had he been intending to bully her. Fortunately the phone number they had was the girl's mother and the girl never got the texts - and I was able to call her and explain.

Unfortunately, the other boy's mother took his side, which I think was bad for everyone concerned, particularly her son - she maintained that my son was the instigator, or a neighbor's kid or somebody else, and that her child would never have sent anything of the kind, and never watched anything inappropriate on the internet - and in the background, I heard the boy saying "he made me do it" (As in, my son made the other boy send the texts; this boy had been texting this stuff on his own, when my son wasn't there. Neither boy realized that their phone numbers showed up with their time-stamped texts on the other end, so I was able to verify what was truthful and what was not.) The Mom and I had been friends up to that point, but we couldn't resolve the issue because she decided it was mostly my son's fault, so now we are not.

I made the boys take a break from their friendship, which was really hard on my son because he didn't have a lot of other options - I think they still hung out at school (which was OK with me, since they were supervised) but we didn't see them outside of school for several months, and after that only under my supervision. I had a long conversation with my son about what he did, how it could have become a police issue, I bought "A Five Is Against the Law" and made him read it, and we made an agreement that he was not allowed to swear unless he could show me that he can keep from swearing when it isn't appropriate. (I don't really care about swearing, but I do care about my ASD kid getting into trouble because he can't differentiate between swearing around other teenagers and swearing in front of the principal.)

I never told my son directly that his friend had blamed him (I told him he needed to ask his friend what had happened,) but I did have lots of conversations about what real friends do and what people who are not friends do, and how sometimes you can't trust people just because they are willing to hang around with you. Eventually, DS disentangled himself from that particular social group, which was a good thing, and found new friends - but it took him 2 1/2 years.

We had an entirely separate situation with online web surfing at home that I'll mention here in case what we found is helpful - last year, DS started stealing the computer and using it the way you'd imagine a teen boy would. Eventually, we caught him; in this way I think Jacoby is right - he was curious in a very normal way. We had a conversation about how the women (and men) in videos are not what women really look like and are more like a cartoon than real life.

I found this website and article to be incredibly helpful regarding porn: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/gende ... ornography

Back to the OP - you are very right to be concerned; other kids will not face the same consequences our kids will because they know the right things to do or say to make adults feel OK about it. I do think that it helps to explain the reason for the taboo, and how there are rules about talking about sexuality.

You also do NOT want your son to be keeping secrets, because he needs you to give him honest feedback (DS used to "try out" gross kid jokes on me; he'd figured out that he shouldn't repeat jokes he didn't understand until I explained them. Saved us all kinds of trouble.) It's a balance between holding him accountable and letting him know that if anything feels "off" you won't hold it against him if he asks you about it.

Yes, this is what I'm going for! Thanks so much everyone.