Seeing peer struggles with the Ninja sucks so bad. You try as best you can to prepare them for social interaction, and know it will likely be a challenge for them in life. He has had a hard time lately in school with some of the boys there, who he naively thinks are his friends. Thankfully the school administration acknowledged the struggles in my recent IEP meeting without me bringing it up, and the principal informed me that she had brought a group of them in for a talk recently. I have suspected that the other kids were not exactly nice to him, but seeing their rejection first hand is pretty heartbreaking. Today I took Ninja lunch, which I don’t often get to do (parents are permitted to come join their kids for lunch), and he led me from the table where we first sat to one where his “friends” were sitting. Their facial expression and reactions as they saw him approach were exasperated, a bit disgusted, and annoyed. One with a hand slap to the forehead and the other with an immediate audible grievance. They pointed out that he was not supposed to be sitting with them for an unclear amount of time, presumably per the adults in charge who had talked to them.
Thankfully this (for now) does not seem to phase Ninja, as he still thinks they are friends because one of them rides his bus. Friendship standards are low around here, clearly. I told him we weren’t going to ignore the “rules” and he agreed to move tables. I asked him why he likes sitting with those guys and he responded that he tries to make them laugh but they don’t really get it. Annoyance is a reaction that Ninja regularly fails to recognize, thinking he just has to keep trying. For now I am grateful for his naivete.
He seems to go farther and farther from our world all the time, declaring anywhere he is at any given time to be Wildtown. Wildtown is his imaginary world where he is the president and founder, which is the convenient way for his PDA brain to justify doing whatever he wants. Pretty much anything and everything Ninja ever wants to do is legal in Wildtown, which is where we always happen to be. Kids becoming police officers once they turn 7? You know it. A driving age of 8? Of course. Any insinuation that Ninja is not a “real” police officer or that he can’t have the Lamborghini he keeps asking for (because he’s allowed to drive in Wildtown) is met with exasperated indignation or rage.
The capital is called Britney City, and their currency (called Britney money, if you will) is… leaves. It’s occupied by microscopic residents called the Germs, who are currently at war with Panda City over territory, I am told. It’s an entire society that exists solely in his head, with it’s own economy and legal system. I honestly find these inner workings of his brain fascinating, because it’s like he is creating his own world with bits of information he picks up from around him, but that PDA disallows him to accept or fully comprehend.
Last weekend the boy went “hunting” in Wildtown to procure meat for feeding the family. His lacrosse stick rifle took down a 6 point buck, which we later found in the refrigerator, wrapped in foil. Because that’s what you do when you store venison for later, obviously. It’s not the first non food item ever found in our refrigerator, but probably my favorite.
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