Almost puppy time

one more sleep!

The school went skating today and I went along. I'm glad I did, because otherwise none of the boys in Patrick's class would have had their skates tied on properly! Another mom who has 6 boys in hockey (EEEK) was there with her niece (who is one of 8 kids) tying all of the girls laces in record time!

Poor Damon though. He was having a good time, skating around, showing off his great skating skills to his teacher and fellow classmates. Then his "best friend" and another friend who was his teammate from last year began to chase him and then push him down on ice. He came and told me and wanted to come off the ice. I told him to tell his teacher, but she wasn't skating, and he couldn't get her attention through the glass. I watched them do it to him again (of course not in front of where the teacher was watching). He couldn't even skate fast and get away because they had gotten another older child to help them round him up. I walked around the arena and told her and she watched them do it to him again at the other end of the ice before calling them over and giving them one last warning before they would be pulled from the ice.

I think we are going to have to convince Damon to go through a change of guard when it comes to his "friends". I am getting irritated by the way his "best friend" treats him and his brothers. They have known each other since they were 3 and they have a lot in common (2nd son, love the outdoors and extreme sports). BUT he is argumentative with me, mean and spiteful to Campbell and Patrick, and is a bad influence on Damon. (I want my kids to make their own friends. I wonder if his mom is thinking the same thing about Damon.) And now he is bullying him. That is not a friend. I haven't tried to intervene before because I really like his parents and his brother and sister, and I don't understand why he is such a playground bully. He is the biggest suck around his mom too. *rolling eyes* I don't have him over very often because I have to supervise them very closely. When he has been here, he and Damon have destroyed property, picked on Campbell and he has said some pretty inappropriate things in an attempt to look tough. Once I even took him home early because he was threatening Campbell with a baseball bat (well he did it twice, the first time I told him that if I saw that again he was leaving).

Damon has a sensitive soul inside of his tough exterior. I have been encouraging that with his art classes and signing him up for the junior humane club, but at the same time letting him "get it out" with things like lacrosse, hockey and doing physical things with his buddies.

Only 95 school days until summer vacation!