So these days, I have a seven-year-old. It's a bit of big deal, actually, because he was only a toddler a few weeks ago, as far as I recall. Actually, that's not true. His toddling years seem very, very far away in the distant past. But SEVEN, to me, is an old age. It's middle-childhood. It's the youngest age of child I've ever taught. I now have a child as old as children I've had in my classes. Quite a milestone.
But being in middle childhood is HARD. I dimly recall myself, and more recently recall all the issues children in my classes encountered. Many of these issues boil down to one thing. The concept of "coolness".
The first time Master R asked what "cool" meant, I asked what he thought, and he confessed he hadn't a clue. This must have been when he was five, I think. I explained that "cool" just means socially powerful. A person can make up any kind of bonkers rule about what you have to do to be cool and lots of other people will copy them so that that person likes them. And so all the other people who want to be liked by the first person will also like them. It's a conversation we've had several times over, as he's encountered more situations involving "coolness". I always reiterate that there's no such thing as being cool. People just want there to be, to have power over others.
A while ago, he revealed that at school, children claimed to be cool if they rolled up their jumper sleeves into big wadges half way up their forearms. Yes, really. This, for a while, was the height of social sophistication. I told Master R how, when I was in Years 5 and 6 myself, it was considered cool to roll down your white, knee-high socks to form a huge doughnut around your ankles. It looked absurd, and was really quite awkward, because it made your socks bang together. To be cool was to risk falling on your face because your ankles had clonked together.
I don't want Master R to feel like he has to follow these bonkers rules which socially powerful kids create to make themselves feel powerful and liked. I think he has a healthy level of scepticism about "coolness". A couple of months ago, apropos of nothing, he declared; "There are too many silly little boys at school who think they are cool." This sounded like a direct quote of a teacher in a disciplinary assembly, so I asked who had said that. His reply? "I did. I think it, Mummy."
Bang on the money, there kid. But the trouble is, now he's finding that other children are challenging him and being unkind, using "coolness" as the weapon of choice. This week, someone in his class asked him "Do you think you're cool?" He replied that he didn't know. Of course, the other child said "I don't think you are." Words like knives. Because by denying someone else the title of "coolness" you're putting them down. Down as cleverly and subtley as you know how as a seven-year-old. But down low.
"You're not as good as me and I want you to know it. I want you to know absolutely that you haven't won my approval and until you follow my rules and behave as I think you should, you won't."
Happily, Master R has no interest in this child approving of him. And to be perfectly honest, neither have I. But it hurts my heart that other people are hurting his heart. Making him question himself. Challenging him to doubt himself. Exerting pressure on him to be anything other than what he is.
Master R, what you are is utterly marvellous. You are curious, thoughtful, articulate, caring, imaginative, stubborn and at times, utterly infuriating. I hope that stubborn streak will enable you to stand up to the self-claimed cool kids and let them know that they hold no social power over you. Because the only power anyone holds over you is the power you LET them take from you.