When Boys are “Catty”

I have three children. Each of them different. Like members of The Breakfast Club. I have, my daughter, The Princess. My oldest son is a combo of Basket Case & Nerd. My youngest son is The Jock. Guess which one is having friend issues? Not the nerd & not my daughter. The Jock is having problems. The hardest part? Being a witness and no ability to help. I don’t want to fix things for him for two reasons: I’m an aide in his school & I don’t want him getting picked on further because “mommy helped”. I always thought if any of my kids would have these issues that it would be my daughter. After all, girls are catty. We’ve all heard that. I saw it myself growing up. Girls getting jealous of other girls. Spreading rumors, making fun of another girl. My oldest son (the nerd) doesn’t have many friends. He’s very quiet. He has one good friend and he’s been happy with that. Even though his friend doesn’t have many friends either, I had in my head that I wanted my other kids to have a few friends. My daughter has a few friends and one is her best friend. The girls in her class are very sweet and friendly with each other. My youngest son, The Jock, is involved in many sports. Football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring. I figured this would surely make for many friends. And it has. To the point where, after school, kids would often yell to him their goodbyes & “see you tomorrows”. However, one boy wasn’t having it. He set out to make my son an outcast & succeeded. He started out with telling the other boys that my son wasn’t good at football. It’s not a lie. My son is no Peyton Manning or Russell Wilson, but he tries and he needs to be active and disciplined. When that didn’t work, he told my son that he’d be his friend only if he did a bad stunt. My son did and he got detention. Many friends dropped off, but a handful stuck around. That was one too many for this kid. When he saw the basic school stuff wasn’t getting him anywhere, he looked elsewhere, namely me & my husband. He asked my son who we voted for in the recent presidential election. When my son told him that we voted for Clinton, it was all this kid needed in a town that was full of Trump voters. Every day my kid was faced with the taunts and I just had to stand by and watch. My usually happy go lucky boy is now filled with anger & I’m already dreading the new school year. I never want to hear any man say that girls are gossipy or catty.