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Sep. 4th, 2010 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_crowI may have done Alice a disservice, in attempting to do a kindness.
In an attempt to maintain her connection with her friends from the Happy-fluffy-love school where she went for 4th and 5th grade, I signed on for a girls group that meets once a month. I was hoping for girls scouts with out the girl scouts - crafts, field trips, yakking and giggly and more like a pile of friends doing things together (which is, of course, how I bond with my friends). Instead it looks like an hour of informal group therapy, with a lot of "safe space for your feelings" and not much else. Not that they don't have a lot of things to talk about; going into 7th grade is a big deal, and for a couple of them they are stepping out of the HFL school for the first time since they started there as pre-schoolers. Into a BIG public school.
So I warned Alice that it was a lot of talking, and allowed as how she could be done in December, and asked her politely to keep me informed on how things were going.
I kind of failed at a women's group a couple years ago. It was more like this, where we had to bare our souls and talk about things I really didn't want to talk about. So I dropped out, hopefully with no bad feelings, with huge relief on my part. Some stuff is private. Some stuff I can talk to Al or another friend about. If I can't talk to them, I really can't talk to anyone. If Alice is in that mental space, she will be pleased to be done. (In retrospect, I also failed the new parents groups and girl scouts, for slightly different reasons.)
Alternatively, this will feed part of her need to connect, and her (surprisingly strong) need for narrative, and she will be delighted to stick with it.
In an attempt to maintain her connection with her friends from the Happy-fluffy-love school where she went for 4th and 5th grade, I signed on for a girls group that meets once a month. I was hoping for girls scouts with out the girl scouts - crafts, field trips, yakking and giggly and more like a pile of friends doing things together (which is, of course, how I bond with my friends). Instead it looks like an hour of informal group therapy, with a lot of "safe space for your feelings" and not much else. Not that they don't have a lot of things to talk about; going into 7th grade is a big deal, and for a couple of them they are stepping out of the HFL school for the first time since they started there as pre-schoolers. Into a BIG public school.
So I warned Alice that it was a lot of talking, and allowed as how she could be done in December, and asked her politely to keep me informed on how things were going.
I kind of failed at a women's group a couple years ago. It was more like this, where we had to bare our souls and talk about things I really didn't want to talk about. So I dropped out, hopefully with no bad feelings, with huge relief on my part. Some stuff is private. Some stuff I can talk to Al or another friend about. If I can't talk to them, I really can't talk to anyone. If Alice is in that mental space, she will be pleased to be done. (In retrospect, I also failed the new parents groups and girl scouts, for slightly different reasons.)
Alternatively, this will feed part of her need to connect, and her (surprisingly strong) need for narrative, and she will be delighted to stick with it.