Motherhood & Overnights & Bullying

People think that having a night away from your children is a ball of laughs, fun and games, going out on the town and living it up. Not in my house. In my house there is Netflix and corn dogs. And there's a bit of loneliness too.

At least I'm not a worry wart anymore. I use to tell myself if my anxiety got too bad over it, I could go to the house that he was staying at and sleep outside the window. I don't have to remind myself of that now. But I am concerned with the time he will go to sleep and how the other boys will treat him. At a huge sleepover a couple of years ago most of them went for it and stayed up all night. That was a joy the next day, he was grumpy the few times he did wake up.

Last year he started really hanging out with two boys who are a year older, so they're in high school as freshmen. Since they are the low man on the totem pole there, they try to enforce their will on him. Now all of a sudden I hear that they are telling him that art class is full of weridos and that it's boring and he shouldn't take it. Not happy at all about that, not at all. Now I must discourage a friendship, gear his life away from them. Yet I also hear that one of his friends in his own age group is making derogatory comments to another of the group about wearing Wal-Mart basketball shorts. How on Earth do I combat this? How do I make him see how wrong this is, that this at it's worst is bullying and at the least negative peer pressure?

Bullying / Peer pressure is suppose to come from those outside of our friends. It's suppose to be something that we as adults can see and respond too. I don't want to call his friends out. What I wish for is a son who is confident enough to say something. To the kid who picked on the basketball shorts, he should have said "leave him alone, maybe it's none of you business what shorts he wears". And to the two older buddies, "I like art, so I'm going to put in my time in Art 1, I don't care who is in the class." Obviously I can't make my son be the crusader that I am / was, but I wish that I could make him comfortable enough in his own skin to be his own master.