expected

Brennan, a high school freshman, eats lunch with high school seniors. He feels much more comfortable hanging out with kids much older and much younger than he is. He does not have one single friend that is his age.

He wanted to have his birthday party in March so his senior friends could come before they graduate from school. His birthday is in July. Of course, March is too early to celebrate, so I set the date for May-ish. He threw a fit, but he knows I don't budge, and eventually accepted the new plans.

It's May-ish now. He invited 15 people to his party, scheduled for this afternoon. I bought enough food for 10, just in case. One senior showed up, for 20 minutes. He had already eaten. He texted other people the whole time. The usual neighborhood kids swarmed in and ate 1/4 of the food and 1/16 of the cake. Instead of being disappointed, Brennan seemed to be beaming at the attention from the neighborhood kids. He even thanked me twice for the party! In front of his friends! I kept waiting for the nastiness to come out of him.

At 7:30, the ending time of the party, I cleaned up the picnic table and loaded up the car. Here it was: He yelled "What the heck! I'm still waiting for some friends to show up!" The poor kid really hadn't come to accept that no one was coming, and of course, it would now be all my fault they didn't come since I was ending the party. That explosion was relatively mild, and to be expected from Brennan.

He broke curfew and stayed out well past dark. He gave me a calm, reasonable explanation, I explained to him some more logical, safe solutions to his problem, and he said "I really want to thank you again for the party." That was not to be expected from Brennan. I milked it and stole a bear hug. Of course his back arched and his arms tensed between us, but ... yeah, expected.

He is not mentioning the planned sleepover at his friends' house that apparently fell through. I am not bringing it up either. We are going to watch the movie Ali with his favorite actor, Will Smith. Then we'll go upstairs. If I direct him in any way to go to bed, though, he'll escalate and blame the cancellation of the sleepover on me. That's to be expected.