this has come up before for my ds10, and lately a bit more often: when in a group school or club setting he very often feels that his ideas get summarily rejected without real consideration.
This seemed to him to be case when working within the odyssey of the mind team, although they did accept at least one of his ideas and he got to work on his costume separately so he was able to have some of his own expression going in the final skit.
he is a different sort of fellow, to be sure, and fairly sensitive (not the most sensitive of boys, but definitely up there).
Creativity seems to be his real 'hallmark', whenever he gets compliments from the gifted teacher, the odyssey coach, etc., and I suppose if he has begun to identify himself with this, he might be expecting too much in terms of group agreement about how great his every idea is.
Granted, being 10, a lot of his ideas are just loony
but anyway, the point of the post is, are there things we can do to help him advocate for his ideas and if/when rejected, get better at just rolling with things and feeling ok about it?
I do notice, and have heard from ds, that in these groups there are usually one or two kids who will take the lead and without proper adult supervision tend to run things completely 'their way', I sat through 10 minutes of an odyssey meeting with one boy just saying no to both ds and another boy, about 10 times each as they tried to come up with a skit. I finally pointed out that he was only writing down what he came up with, and saying no to everyone else who was trying to contribute. He backed off a bit, but of course I'm not around for most of this stuff.
Now as I write this it occurs to me that ds should at least try to be the 'scribe' for these activities...maybe that is one way to feel more involved and in control some of the time. (not all the time, but might be one idea to move towards a solution).
Please let me know what you think, other ideas, similar stories would be helpful.
thanks!!
