My son listened to part of Dr. Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" and he told me that he thinks I am definitely an Eeyore and that he and his dad are Tigger. I think as a 2E kid, he really gets what Dr. Pausch said about "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." He has told me before that he is fine with the way he is and doesn't care that other people might think he is different. He once asked me who these people are that think they can decide for everyone else how they should be. He says he has always known he was different--an anomoly or "un-normally" as he liked to say it, but if he had to choose, he would rather have his intelligence than sports ability.
I don't think has the social anxiety problems that I grew up with because he doesn't mind sharing his opinion even if he thinks it might be different from all the others. He doesn't feel this need to conform and be like everyone else. He says he hates cliche. The freedictionary.com says cliche means a trite or overused expression or idea but it can also mean "a person or character whose behavior is predictable or superficial" and I think he does a pretty good job of avoiding cliche. I tell him this is a positive thing even though some people might not think so. Some people just prefer the cliche.
I think my son successfully uses humor to deal with some things. For example, this morning he was really worried that something might be wrong with a sensitive area of his body but he seemed a little embarrassed and didn't want to give me too many details. I asked him if he might have accidentally bumped into something that might have caused the pain and he said "No, but it feels like a UFO crash landed in my Area 51" and "remember that show we saw about urban legends and there was a guy that went swimming in a river and a fish swam up his..., well the pain is near that area." So I said, Well you haven't been swimming in the Amazon have you? and he said something like "No, but while I was surfing on Amazon, I fell in the EBay."
Yesterday he told me that as the child of Baby Boomer parents, he must have been a "Baby Bummer" and he wanted to know how we felt when we learned that I was pregnant with him. My husband and I assured him that we were very happy when he was born and that we think he is a great kid and we love his sense of humor.
He seemed to have a lot of anxiety last Saturday night when his dad, who had gone out of town with the PGR, was riding a motorcycle home after midnight. He said he couldn't go to sleep until he saw his dad and he kept asking me when I thought his dad would be home. Then he asked me if all men were like this with their other interests more important than being with their family. He said his sister often tells him that she is mad at her boyfriend because he stays out late working out at the gym or he is with friends instead of being with her as much as she wants him to be. He said he could imagine himself 20 years from now at a Gamestop and his girlfriend or wife calls him on the cell phone and asks him to hurry home. "Yes, sweetie, I'll be home in a few minutes." but then I sees a game that I've been looking for and I forget all about the girlfriend. An hour later, I realize that I am going to be in trouble with the girlfriend so I have to come up with a good excuse for being late. I decide to hurry to her favorite restaurant to get something she really likes. I get home, hand it to her, saying that I would have been home sooner but the restaurant took longer than usual to make her favorite food." He told his dad about his imaginary scenario when he finally got home from the PGR ride at 1:00 a.m. hoping to make his dad feel guilty, but his dad just said that he never lies about what he is doing.
My son denies that he has any anxiety at all, but he seems to have an excessive fear of something bad happening to my husband or me or maybe it is just a fear of being alone. His fear is bad enough that he even wants me to stand outside the door every time he has to go to the bathroom "so he can talk to me." When I am in the bathroom for more than a few minutes, he comes to the door because he "just to make sure I am doing okay." He doesn't like being left alone when I have to go next door to help my dad with my mother so he comes with me or if he doesn't he has the phone in his hand and calls me just to make sure I am okay. I wish I knew how to help him get over this fear. I know that I had some of the same fears as a child and I outgrew them, but we have been dealing with this for a while now. I think it might help if I could find a good book for both of us to read and discuss on dealing with anxiety and fear.
