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Drama on the playground.
There's a boy in Minifob's class, we'll call him James. They were in the same class last year as well, wherein they were best friends, but not really good influences on each other. They amped each other up, as best friends tend to do. My personal assessment was that James is ADHD, and I'm pretty sure the parents medicated him halfway through the year because he made this very sudden switch from crazy-hyper-impulsive-but-friendly to never-smiling-calm-but-mean.
Anyway, I asked for them to be separated this year but it didn't happen, and now they actively hate each other. James is actually the lesser of two major reasons we were desperate to change school environments. I hear every day about how James said this mean thing, or organized the boys into rejecting him from some game, and how they fight all the time and taunt each other with the fact that neither will be invited to the other's birthday party. (James' birthday was in the fall and Minifob was indeed not invited, which was actually a relief to me.)
Now Minifob's birthday is coming up in a week, and the rhetoric about not inviting James must have reached a peak and made it home to his parents, because out of the blue, his mother is emailing me to schedule a playdate. I asked Minifob, but he has made it clear he does not want a playdate with this kid under any circumstances. Thing is, it's not impossible that this boy doesn't even really get that Minifob hates him, he seems like the type (or maybe the meds have made him the type) that figures everyone is just mean to everyone and there couldn't be any larger consequences to be derived from that...
So now I have to figure out a way to put off this mom, hopefully without telling her to her face that my kid hates hers. I used our new Cub Scout commitment as my latest excuse, since I don't know what night this week the den meeting will be yet... but that's dangerous, since the idea might make her decide to sign her kid up too. On the other hand, if James appears in his den Minifob is likely to want to quit. So that could work out for me in the long run.
Gawd, I thought girl children were supposed to be the drama queens.
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