Oh, poor difficult child! The trouble is, he is so desperate for a friend tat when this horrible kid next gets n=bored because his friend has gone home, he will be back wanting difficult child to be friends again, and difficult child will jump at the chance to be exploited all over again!
Let us hope that this boy chooses to stay away from difficult child because to be friends with the weird kid is going to make him too uncool. That will be the best thing he can do for difficult child.
It's a really hard lesson for a difficult child to learn. I wasn't even a difficult child, although I guess I was a weird kid. I had friends do this to me, and I still let them do it to me again and again. They would cut me dead when it suited them and ten want me as a friend when it suited them (or they wanted something from me).
Now here is a moral tale, a true tale, of two difficult children. I have told this before, but perhaps not quite in this way.
These two were friends. My difficult child 1 was one of them; the other was his friend Jake (not his real name). difficult child 1 & Jake used to see each other on the boat on the way to school and on the way home. Jake went to a good catholic private school while difficult child 1 went to a government school (not the usual school the local kids went to, but further away). The 'cool' kids all went to the nearest government school but they also were the rough kids too. difficult child 1 was friends with a couple of them as well, one in particular who had hung around for a while because he had a crush on easy child 2/difficult child 2. We took him on outings with us a few times but the relationship cooled as difficult child 1 got more into computer games and friend got more into sports and skateboards.
difficult child 1 & Jake used to visit a lot. Computer games were their common link.
Jake rang one day to ask difficult child 1 to bring his game console and some games around to play. He sounded tentative. difficult child 1 packed his stuff and headed round. About half an hour later he stormed back in - it had been a set-up. A gang of boys, Jake included and also previous friend, had met him with a barrage of water pistols (not good, for game systems). Luckily nothing electronic was damaged. But they had goaded difficult child 1 and when he chased them they went to the home of the grandmother of one of them, who (misunderstanding what was going on) threatened difficult child 1 with the police if he didn't stop bullying the boys.
I went and talked to Jake and his mother. The other boys were there so I talked to them as well, telling them that it was a cruel trick to play. Jake tried to be defiant but he knew it was wrong.
But the trouble was - it had been a test. The other boys (one in particular) had been using Jake for some fun. Jake wanted to belong to the cool kids, and to prove his mettle he had to sever his ties with the weird kid. That way, the new gang would really own Jake because he would not have anyone else to call a friend.
Very cruel.
Some years have now passed. Jake is stuck with his decision. He does whatever his friends want him to, including carrying their weapons for them (not guns or knives but just as illegal). A bludgeon which had just been used in an attack, was given to Jake to keep in his bag. When the police were called it was Jake who was found to be carrying the weapon and now Jake has a police record which he didn't deserve. The attacker already has a long record.
difficult child 1 & Jake are both Aspie. Both of them were desperate for a friend, when they were 12. Jake made a bad choice and is having difficulty backing out of it. Jake would do anything to have a friend. But are Jake's friends TRUE friends? Would THEY do anything for him?
Nope. Because they let him take the rap for them.
You won't be able to tell this story to you difficult child because he won't understand it. He is probably very black and white and views everybody else as thinking the way he does, as feeling the things he does and of course what He would never do, THEY would never do (in his mind).
difficult child 1 was miserable for a long time after this. He had no friends in the neighbourhood and hated this. His friends at school were, frankly, scary (to me). I am a fairly welcoming person but there was a time when I had to ban difficult child 1's schoolfriends from our home because they were making threats to difficult child 3. Mind you, they still came home with him (a long way out of their way) knowing they wouldn't be allowed in our house, just to help difficult child 1 collect an old TV from a man who was giving it away. I let them stay and chat out in the yard and made sure difficult child 3 stayed inside out of their way. Soon after, they had proven to me that they were behaving themselves and I reversed the ban.
A fair-weather friend is not a friend at all. You can be friendly to them, but you should never trust them again. Never let yourself be so vulnerable again.
Would difficult child understand role play? When he's not so upset, could you rehearse some scenes with him? Would he be capable of understanding how much he humiliated himself, standing there crying out, "Please be my friend"? Is there a kid (or adult) that difficult child knows who he finds embarrassing? It's not the same as redirecting, but it might help. Even if difficult child has some strategies in place for when this kid comes over again...
Meanwhile, are there any activities you could get him into? Something like difficult child 3's drama class, which is for kids with disabilities. YOu would think it would be a mistake, to get a very bright and almost-normal-seeming kid like difficult child 3 and throw him into a mix of kids with a range of disabilities most of which also include intellectual disabilities, but in fact it is helping him a lot. There are a couple of kids in the group who are high-functioning autistics like difficult child 3 (and also bright) but difficult child 3's best friend in the group is not one of those, he is a young man of 18 with significant intellectual disability and developmental delay. They only really have computer games in common, but the older boy idolises difficult child 3 who is also very patient with him. The kids in this group have taught difficult child 3 a great deal about loyalty - a very important lesson. difficult child 3 then takes this lesson further in his interactions with more 'normal' people.
In the same way, difficult child 1's weird friends at school taught HIM about loyalty and what true friendship really is, which is why I think HE is the success story, and Jake is not. Poor Jake had no fall-backs, partly because the gang leader took them away and partly because his parents were shielding him from anything remotely abnormal.
As others have said, all kids go through this experience. It is how they use experiences like this to help them learn, that determines how they will get on in life. easy child went through this - she had a good friend, also very bright, who got suckered into the friendship tug of war ("if you want to be my friend you have to ignore easy child because I don't want her in our group").
If experiences like this can be used to teach strength of character; if the child's self-esteem can be bolstered in other ways so they can learn that they deserve to be treated with respect; then they will do well. But if their self-esteem is so poor that they will accept even abuse from a 'friend' in order to say they have a friend - then they will spend their lives being bounced from pillar to post, with their hearts being kicked for other people's amusement or use.
Your difficult child needs GOOD friends, to help him learn to be discriminating about friends and to also learn that he is valued and loved by others outside his family. He also needs to be kept busy, so he just isn't available to 'friends' who just want to use him. And he needs something to be involved in that he can enjoy and feel proud to be doing.
Is there something nearby that fits the bill? If not, can you manufacture something? It can be done - every group has to start somewhere. difficult child 3's drama group started (for a while) a social skills group which goes on outings. We found that ten pin bowling was always popular and it was very easy to organise a monthly (or more often) get-together at the local bowling alley, the kids and their parents. We'd all have coffee while the kids bowled. A group can start with just two people.
Another suggestion - the Aspie side of difficult child could mean that the most loyal and compatible friends for difficult child could be a lot younger, so start looking among the bright but younger kids of your acquaintance. This certainly seems to be happening with difficult child 3, just as it did with difficult child 1.
I'll keep thinking - but this is a situation you could use to help teach difficult child what true friendship can be like.
Marg
