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Heaven help me. Patrick is breaking my heart tonight. We've been away from school for a week in Disney World and he was so happy. Tonight he's in bed crying because he's dreading going back to school tomorrow.
He's going through exactly the same crap I dealt with with the social scene in school when I was his age and it's killing me to see him like this. 
He's trying too hard to be all things to all people, trying too hard to ensure everyone likes him, trying too hard to fit in and be cool and it's backfiring.
Classmates are ignoring him, making fun of him, picking on him which only makes him become more desperate and try harder which gives the classmates more fuel.

It's one thing to go through it yourself, it's quite another to watch your child suffer with a pain you can still feel. I remember the isolation, the burning sensation of the blush on my cheeks when the girls would mock me. I remember wondering why they didn't like me.

Knowing I had a lot to offer, that I was a good person and would make a great friend if they would only give me a chance. Trying so hard, willing to stand on my head and laugh at their cruel jokes at my expense, even learning to poke fun at myself so they would laugh with me rather than at me.
Being invited to birthday parties only because I had to be and when I no longer had to be, being the only kid in class who wasn't invited.

It got so bad, my parents changed my school twice till we found one that was the right fit. It took 4 years of non stop agony, of my coming home each day crying, of my parents trying to figure out how to make it better to make it right. 

I want to kill these children for putting PJ through even a small tiny taste of this. Even if it never gets to the point where it was for me, the fact that he's now lying in his bed crying because he's dreading school tomorrow because his "friends" ignore him makes me want to go to school tomorrow with my claws sharpened tomorrow, ready to tear out the eyes of these horrible mean children who are causing my son pain.

I know that I can't. I know that I along with thousands of other adults made it out of that hell to the other side and grew up to be a decent human.
I know that anything I say to him is going to go in one ear and out the other. I know that drive to show them, to prove to them, to make them see that you are a worthy friend overrides anything I might tell him.

I am going to talk to the school psychologist tomorrow and see if I can't set up an appointment with her for him to see what she might have to offer.