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I've been thinking lately about boyhood and masculinity and emotion. There's this anti-trope in US society - by which I mean it's a trope that was formed to combat another trope. The trope is, "boys shouldn't cry", or sometimes "real men don't cry." I'm going to keep talking about boys because I'm specifically thinking of my teenage kid. But this trope is like the number one example in any article about toxic masculinity. This trope is seen as making boys repress their emotions and not allowing a healthy emotional life. The anti-trope is, allow boys to express their emotions. Encourage them to be sensitive and talk about their feelings and develop emotional intelligence.
But...what about anger? As a parent, I worry all the time about my kid. He's got some neurodivergent issues, we're seeking treatment for it. But one thing that's really started to bother me lately is his interactions with his school. I get a call at the snap of a finger, the minute he loses his temper or has an emotional meltdown or refuses to work on an assignment. "Ms. Prydain, please talk to your son." Every incident requires an incident report and a committee meeting and a notation in his permanent file.
Oh, he wasn't totally cooperative today? He had an understandable reaction to being disappointed or anxious about something? Oh no, have I failed as a parent? /s
And I mean, I get it, I do. They have a school to run and can't be spending all their time on the neediest kid. But I do worry at the message that he's getting. "It's not okay to be anxious." "It's not okay to get angry" - or at least not in a way that anyone can tell. Keep those feelings bottled up, young man, and only express them in socially acceptable ways. Otherwise, grit your teeth and get with the program.
What is a socially acceptable way to express anger? Is there such a thing when you're a child in school? For all the talk about how all emotions are healthy, I think it can't be denied that some things are okay to express, and some things will get the psychiatrist called in.
And yes, it's good to have emotional intelligence and it's good to learn some emotional regulation, I just think it's kind of weird that amid all the talk about how toxic masculinity discourages boys from expressing emotion, I'm not sure that doing it this way is much better. Is he actually learning healthy strategies to regulate his emotions, or is he just learning to mask and not express how he feels or that something bothers him?
This is already all over the place but I thought of this quote from a character on Marvelous Mrs. Maisel:
So as the mom of a sensitive, creative, intelligent, and conscientious teen boy, what am I missing here and how could I be doing better?
Hi! I also enjoyed The Black Cauldron. :)
Welll my first reaction to your OP, before I even scrolled down to see "AuDHD," was, "Another day, another 'gifted kid is unhappy, must be autistic'" soo... And warning, treating for autism with a kid who isn't actually autistic just makes things worse / the child angrier.
But that said, individuals I've known who were both gifted and actually autistic have been helped by Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough by Winner and Crooke (for adults about the workplace), and The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules by Jennifer Cook. Winner and Crooke also wrote Socially Curious and Curiously Social: A Social Thinking Guidebook for Bright Teens and Young Adults, which I haven't seen but hey, same author and for teens.
In particular, Winner and Crooke have a thing about "People have an idea of what counts as a big deal and what doesn't, and if you react super strongly to what they think should be a small deal, they'll see you as unpredictable/crazy and treat you badly."
Which is true. But oversimplified. And doesn't account for like actual differences and justifiable stronger reactions. After all, different people are different and how is it fair that one group gets to just dictate what is and isn't a big deal? (As many of your responses pointed out.) (I'd add that giftedness can be the sole cause of "over"reactions. Or can just be a partial cause with autism and/or ADHD as the other part(s).)
Enter idiosyncrasy credits / "weirdness points".
--once established as a generally trustworthy person / good friend, then you can stand up for your interpretation of the situation where it is so a big deal. (Being innately different, even solely due to giftedness, means you just are disadvantaged in this. It forces you to use up more idiosyncrasy credits on basic needs. Unfair but true fact of life.)
Based on your description, he's stuck in the opposite situation: He's already established as "the one who always overreacts." Uphill battle there; from a solely social perspective would be best to switch schools. The new dx will, socially, operate as a "well he's defective so he gets a pass for his constant overreactions." Might or might not make the situation tolerable for him ("You see, the autism means that X thing that doesn't bother most people really bothers him, so be kind to the defective and don't do it"), but that's never gonna be as healthy a situation as a new school where he started off on the right foot (and got established as "the overall good guy who cares weirdly a lot about X, we like him so we'll respect that").
See also Stephanie Tolan's A Time to Fly Free (about a preteen but still). And Grace Llewellyn's The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
(Ran this by one of the diagnosed AuDHD+gifted people I know and he cosigned it.)
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