My son came to me upset.
It was late. Desi (8) was asleep next to me. I was in bed, moving toward sleep. The edible I took creeped in on me. David and the older girl’s were in Europe.
Raffi (12) stood next to my bed and begged me to buy him something he wanted on my amazon account. He was very adamant that he needed this particular purchase. Then, when that didn’t work, he asked for something else he “desperately needed.” This pinged all the bells for me. When he is obsessing over having things, or craving junk food, anything that can give him a dopamine boost, like an amazon package at the front door, I know something else is going on.
Then he cried. He told me that his online friend, Connie, blocked him. He plays games with three boys from across the country and a girl, named Connie. He, at 12, is not quite into puberty yet, but it’s coming. He talks about Connie sometimes, has kind of a crush on her, their interactions are pretty immature and their talks were very much gaming-oriented. I can hear them all playing games together often and when I hear them, they are decidedly PG-rated, someone occasionally swears, but it’s mostly game-focused and some back and forth ribbing and shit talking.
Raffi is not entirely an accurate reporter of information. For first time readers, our boy came to us through foster care and ended up staying, along with his little sister, Desi. Raffi had endured a lot of early life trauma, some of it from being in multiple foster care residences and institutions.
His memory has holes, a kink in his development, and he is more than willing to fold created memories into those spaces, and they almost always are about validating his sense that he is not being cared for in the world. Like, if he tells me about a situation that happened, I know I will have to gather corroborating facts, because his mind makes-up things and then, they get cemented in as he talks and explains, and he accepts them as fact as they roll in. He isn’t lying as much as he is filling in the blanks of lost memory.
An example: Last week he told me he spent his entire childhood with us, “sleeping on a couch” in our bedroom. This is true. His statement makes it sound like we had neglected him, and he meant it that way. He didn’t consider that he had always had a room, set up like a Pottery Barn show room, but he didn’t like to sleep alone. We put a couch in our bedroom so he could come in when he got scared.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s right,” he said, thinking. The puzzle pieces coming together.
“Yeah, I liked to play in my room, but I liked to sleep in your room.”
His brain had conjured up memories of sleeping on the couch in our bedroom and he filled that in as another way he wasn’t taken care of in his early life. His brain always goes there.
“Why did Connie block you?” I asked, holding my voice so I didn’t sound like I was blaming him.
“It's not my fault” he blurted out.
“Dude, not blaming. I’m asking.”
We encourage honesty a lot in this family, and you can’t get to honesty if a kid is in fear of being punished. They will save themselves and lie, and this is understandable, so David and I check our own reactions. We want their honesty so we can talk through mistakes instead of handing out consequences. Raffi shifted his body and I saw his face contort into a grimace. This is good - for the longest time, his only way to express emotion was through rage. The crying, the sadness, the confusion, those are real.
“I really like her,” he said. “I don’t know why she blocked me.”
I asked questions, trying to get to what really happened.
What I get it this: He and his three friends, all boys, were showing each other pictures of themselves. He swears they were face selfies and there were no body shots, clothed or not. (I checked his socials to verify this and this checks out). He was also very clear on this point - we have discussed very specifically that he should never send a dick pic, that girls pretty much never actually find a naked penis in a photo attractive, and that it feels yucky for them, and that we as a gender will make fun of any man who sends us one. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
But Connie’s parents didn’t want her sharing her pics or information, for all the right reasons. She was clear about that. But the boys persisted. And this is where it gets cloudy and Raffi blames this one friend for pushing her to send a pic. But I also know Raffi. I know he can stand next to my bed as I fall asleep, pleading for me to buy him something, without stopping, and I know how he can hang in there, trying to convince me to provide the thing he feels he needs, his attempts to wear me down can last endlessly, and I know how obsessive and unrelenting it can feel to be on the other end of that, that he can lose sense of when he is being appropriate because he is in the dopamine tunnel of need.
So, I know he probably helped apply some pressure, even if his friend was the ring leader.
She eventually wrote him that she didn’t feel safe and blocked him. I am so happy she did that. She took care of herself, drew boundaries, stuck to them - at 12! That she didn’t want to go against her parents and she knew enough to end the contact, shows me she is right where she needed to be.
Connie absolutely made the right decision. And I said as much to Raffi.
He cried some more because he felt like he was being blamed for something. And I could tell he didn’t really understand what he had done, so I woke myself up fully and we had a long bedside chat, my hands always on him so he feels my love. We also kept talking about it for a few days after.
This is the perfect time to have these conversations.
This is not the time to punish. He received consequences by losing a friendship that mattered to him. What he needed was some deep thinking and learning around what happened.
One of the things we are challenged with as parents is helping our sons to understand why three guys pressuring a girl to do ANYTHING is wrong. To him, it was a group of friends, trying to persuade her to join their fun. For Connie, it was a bunch of assholes that outnumber her, pestering her, trying to get her to abandon her comfort and do what they want. I’m sure it felt terrifying for her.
Add to this that my son has a pile of neuro-diverse issues. He is developmentally an 8-year-old in a 12-year-olds-body. His ability to judge the reactions of others has always been off. “Read the room” is not a flippant criticism around our house, it is a quick reminder in his ear to pay attention to the body language and words of the people around him.
Loving him means understanding where he is, who he is, loving him as he is, and also helping him grow into the man I know he can be.
So why am I writing about this?: Because one conversation about “consent” with our boys doesn’t cut it.
Raffi and I have talked about consent a lot over the years, but consent has always been this thing that happens when his sister consents, or doesn’t, to a wrestling match. Or this idea of sex with a girl when he’s older, but because its before puberty, it’s kind of a weird, far-off apparition. And we know that whatever situation presents itself that it will be a new and unique scenario and the consent lectures might not seem to apply, like what if he is 15 and she is drunk and seems super-willing, will he know to back off? Will he know he should take her home? Call us for help, to come get her?
Like it happened with Connie, all the times we talked didn’t matter because it didn’t feel like a consent situation. They were having fun, and the discussions were over a game, lots of physical communication signals were blunted. Consent didn’t even come to his mind, because I didn’t specially cover this particular situation.
What I am grateful for is our family decision to open up conversation for ANYTHING. David and I talk with our kids about race, gender, sexuality, sex, consent, girls, boys, everything is on the table, no question too stupid. Raffi often comes to me asking questions and I listen. I try - and it isn’t always easy - to meet him right where he is. To keep my face blank and curious and judgement free.
So if he asks: Is it racist to say X? Or, why is it bad to call someone gay (as a pejorative)? We delve into it. We encourage him to show emotions that aren’t just anger. That crying is fine. Being empathic is both easy and hard for him. Sometimes he wants me to pull the car over and help an unhoused person who reminds him of his mom. In my book, I wrote about how devoutly and sweetly he cared for the unhoused people who came to our house looking for food. And other times he can’t recognize when someone needs empathy or a hug instead of recrimination and a forceful lecture.
Even after our long talk, he found it challenging to understand why Connie saw him as a threat, because what he saw himself doing seemed harmless to HIM. This makes sense when you look at his history: When kids have been abused and neglected as children, in the most important stages of their development, particularly when hunger is an issue, like Raffi, his needs are absurdly-self focused. He is consumed with making sure snacks are handed out fairly, that there will be enough for him, that he will be considered, taken care of, the anxiety around coming home with groceries, or Christmas or birthdays is EXTREME for him, so much fear that it will be obvious, no one is there for him.
But in a few years he will be an adult and this world will not give two shits about his background, his early development or his issues. He will have to be in the world and get the rules and play according to them and there won’t be a lot of grace for getting it wrong.
So right now, everything is a time to learn.
One of the things I wish is that I could talk to Connie’s folks and tell them about the great decision she made for herself, how their parenting has mattered and kept her safe. And I’d love to know what it felt like from her perspective so that Raffi could really understand. But I also know that he probably would feel her pain, he would be empathic, but then that primitive need to have his needs taken care of would kick in - damn you early neglect and hunger - and he might try to rope her back into a friendship. Or maybe it would stick this time and he would listen - we are now working on mirroring what people say back to them, instead of reacting.
What I know is that this kid has come so far in a short span of years and we are very proud of him. He is a great kid. He has a beautiful heart-in-training. He wants to do right. Someday, the hope is he will be the guy who helps the young woman being surrounded by a bunch of asshole guys, that he will be the hero in his own story and theirs.
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END NOTES:
Next week is Thanksgiving, so no Thursday essay, but I will still be doing recipes on Sundays.
Hope you have a wonderful holiday with your family.
Thanks you, as always, for reading. xo
I love your compassion and understanding of the way he filters events to fit the story he tells himself, that he’s not cared for. I have worked with so many foster adoptive parents who tell me that the child (my client) is a liar. Raffi is fortunate and obviously very well loved and understood.
I love "heart-in-training"! And I agree, it's never too early to talk about consent. Brava!